Happily Ever After: Salvatore Style
by Trogdor19
Summary: A cute and funny peek into the boarding house, where Damon/Elena and Caroline/Stefan are living happily ever after, with some inevitable friction between couples. Sweet Delena moments with lots of laughter in between when Caroline and Damon start a pranking war. Fluff that is guaranteed to brighten your day!
1. Roommates

_**Intro: **__This is a sequel to my Season 4 re-write "Desperate Love," but if you haven't read it, fear not. It was a crazy ride of a story but the end result is similar to what the world would be like if Elena and Damon and Stefan and Caroline had all gotten together at the beginning of Season 4 (read: much smaller body count, at least of important characters) So, to summarize: Jeremy isn't dead, the Gilbert house is still standing, Carol Lockwood isn't dead, all the hybrids aren't dead, there's no Silas and the vampire cure was a spell not an energy drink. No one took it. And there's no sire bond. See, things are already looking up in this universe and we haven't even gotten started yet!_

* * *

**Chapter 1: Roommates**

**ELENA POV**

I'm lying next to my boyfriend, un-arguably the most beautifully masculine creature inhabiting this universe, and for possibly the first time since I've met him, I'm not at all interested in jumping his bones.

"_YeeeeesssssyesyesyesyesyesYY YYYEEESSSSSS!"_

"We've got to get our own place," he says flatly.

"You'd be bored without Caroline, and you'd miss Stefan. Besides," I remind him, "you love what she did to the living room, even if you won't admit it."

"She put a fucking stuffed unicorn on my mantle!"

"I was more talking about the furniture. Besides, you know that's Caroline and Stefan's special unicorn from when they first got together."

"_OhmigoshohohmyGODGODDon't-yes-ooooohhAHHHHHHHHHH!"_

"I just hope that unicorn's at least eighteen, because it's getting a hell of show right now," Damon remarks dryly.

"Gluing it to the bedpost was a nice touch," I acknowledge.

"Now she can't move it back to my mantle. Plus, it was the only place left to put things other than the ceiling. Between Caroline's wardrobe and Stefan's packrat tendencies, I'm surprised they found enough open space to get it on."

"They're probably on top of three decades worth of Time magazines right now," I say, only half-joking.

There's a thump and Stefan groans as if he's in terrible pain.

Damon chuckles. "Think the stack just fell over."

"_Oh, rightthererightrightrightthe eeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrree eeeeeeeDON'TSTOPDON'T!"_

"Have you ever read the Lord of the Rings trilogy?" Damon asks me idly.

"No, but I saw the movies. Why?"

"Do you remember when Legolas and Gimli were counting off the Orcs they killed throughout the battle scene?"

"_Harder! HARDER! Oh, fuck me, FUCK ME! Please, Stefan, pleasemoremoremoremore!"_

"I need to get him an instructional manual," Damon says disgustedly. "If a woman has to _tell _you to fuck her harder, you're doing it wrong."

"I do remember saying please a lot," I remind him, grinning playfully.

"That's different," Damon maintains staunchly.

"So wait, what was the Lord of the Rings thing?"

"We should have an orgasm-off," Damon says, rolling onto his side and smiling down at me, his glacier-blue eyes sparkling with amusement. "You and Caroline can count off."

"Are you kidding?" I ask, alarmed. "I'd be permanently brain damaged by the time we won. Don't you remember what happened that time I had seven in one afternoon?"

"You started talking again after an hour and a half," he protests.

"You make it sound like I didn't try. It's kind of scary when you genuinely can't remember how words fit together," I gripe.

"At the time, you thought it was pretty funny," he reminds me, sliding a hand across my bare stomach. I shiver in response.

"_AAAAHHHGGGGHHHHOOOOHHHHHHHHH HRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" _

The goosebumps from Damon's touch fade.

"You know he makes that same horrible sound when you gut-stake him," I tell Damon. "God, that's creepy."

"That's it," Damon says flatly.

He climbs out of bed and pulls on a pair of jeans. I watch him with the same mild disappointment that always afflicts me when he gets dressed.

"Where are you going?"

"Compel a contractor. I should have soundproofed this house years ago. It's just such a pain in the ass finding a method that doesn't destroy antique wood paneling."

"Right now?" I ask dubiously. "It's after midnight."

He leans over the bed and gives me a quick kiss. "Baby," he says, unsmiling. "I take your turn-offs seriously."

* * *

**XOXO**

* * *

**DAMON POV**

The sounds of hammering and sawing echo through the house, along with a curse here and there. I'm sick to death already of babysitting a bunch of rednecks with hammers who have no respect for the sanctity of two-hundred-year-old cherry wood paneling.

"Elena?" I call. "Are you up there? Have you seen the box full of insulation samples?"

It's annoying having to search for her like a human but the whine of a table saw makes it impossible for me to locate her any other way.

"Elena?" I stride into our room, and immediately spot her dark head. I frown, because the bathtub isn't exactly where I expected to find her. Especially since there isn't any water in it.

Her shoulders are shaking, but she's not breathing. A hundred ways that she could be hurt or dying or have been attacked run through my head in the two steps it takes me to reach her side.

I drop the notebook and folder of papers I was carrying and reach for her.

"What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

She looks up at me through tangled brown hair and tries to smile.

"Hi."

"Why are you in the bathtub?" I ask as gently as I can. She's fully clothed and curled up with a pile of crumpled Kleenex, which I find mildly alarming even though she appears to be unharmed.

"I'm fine," she squeaks, her lips trembling as she forces another smile for me. I pull her to me as best I can with a bathtub between us, sheltering her head in the crook of my neck. Her cheeks are wet with tears, and as soon as I touch her a sob breaks loose and I feel saltwater start to seep into my collar.

"It's nothing, Damon, I swear. I'm just being silly." She pats my chest soothingly and hiccups. "Don't worry about me, okay? There's nothing you need to fix."

I know exactly who I need to fix, I think with a glare toward the opposite wing of the house.

I hand her my handkerchief, kissing her forehead. Kleenex is for peasants.

"Be right back."

She bites her trembling lip and clutches my handkerchief to her chest, nodding.

It doesn't take an intellectual giant to figure out what's got her upset. Caroline's been flashing a diamond the size of a softball around the house for the last three days, and in those three days, I've walked in on her telling the story of how Stefan proposed to five different people. Which means poor Elena has probably had to hear it at least twice that often.

I told him the fucking band was overkill.

My stomach clenches unpleasantly against the thought of her jealousy. I know she doesn't want to be the one Stefan proposed to._ I_ know that, and _she_ knows that, but she's still crying in the bathtub.

I close the door of the study so no one will see what I'm retrieving.

At least she's crying in _my _bathtub. I pause when I consider that, softening a little as I realize that it's become our oasis, the place both of us retreat to when life sucks a little more than normal. Because neither of us ever leaves that tub unhappy, especially now that we usually use it together.

I shake my head. The tub is definitely magic. If we ever move, I'm taking it with me.

I slide my prize into my pocket and straighten my shoulders against a wave of nervousness.

Elena's blowing her nose when I come back. I wait for her to wipe her eyes before I enter the room, because I want her to be seeing clearly for this.

She looks up and gives me a shaky smile and without a word, I pop open the small velvet box in my hand and her eyes grow about three sizes.

I watch her face instead of the box, because I know exactly what's in there. Even if I hadn't spent a month with a jewelry designer perfecting the setting and three months searching for just the right color diamonds, I've definitely spent a few quiet nights staring at it since it was finished.

It has two marquise-cut stones, one a beautiful chocolate-cinnamon with flashes of gold, and one a brilliant, icy blue. They are set one atop the other and slightly offset, with golden celtic knotwork weaving them tightly together, sweeping up to a graceful point at the top and bottom of the ring.

Another tear streaks down her cheek, but it looks different from the others. She glances up at my face, then back at the box, then slowly reaches toward it.

I snap the box shut. "Nope. I'm not asking. We're not there yet."

I squat down next to the tub so I can take her hand, twining our fingers together and bringing them to my lips for a protective kiss.

"But I don't want you to think that there is any scenario, ever, anywhere, where_ Caroline Forbes _is loved more than you are," I tell her, even though it is perfectly fucking obvious.

She chokes back a laugh, a smile dawning across her face.

"We don't need to get engaged after five minutes like a pair of horny teenagers wearing purity rings," I tell her disdainfully. "We've got forever."

Elena comes halfway out of the tub, wrapping her arms around me and squeezing so hard that I feel my collarbone flex dangerously.

I pull her the rest of the way out until she's straddling me on the floor. She pulls back and looks at me, her eyes full of love and unshed tears.

"So no," I tell her. "I'm not asking yet. But until I do, me and the little box," I waggle it enticingly, "aren't going anywhere."

She sniffles and nods, laying down on my chest with her hands tucked up between us like she does when she's feeling vulnerable and I wrap her up and hold her, even though the tiles are digging into my tailbone.

"You know it's not going to hurt my indestructible ego if you admit that you're also upset that you and Stefan's epic love wasn't epic enough to merit a proposal," I tell her, keeping my voice matter-of-fact.

"That's ridiculous," she says in her snuffly little voice.

I just wait.

"It's stupid," she finally says. "It's irrational. You _know_ I don't want to be married to Stefan. Even if you had never been born I wouldn't. As much as I love him, we don't exactly bring out each other's best qualities."

"I know," I tell her. "But just because you don't want to be married to him doesn't mean it doesn't hurt that he didn't ask."

Elena burrows her head deeper into the curve of my neck and kisses the underside of my jaw. "Why do you have to be so much better than me? You always put me to shame."

"Yes, Elena," I say with heavy sarcasm. "I am better than you. It is about time you acknowledged my moral superiority."

I stroke her hair, gently untangling it with my fingers and smoothing it against the soft knit of her shirt. I wait, listening to her ease a little more with every passing moment. I love the way she melts into me when I hold her, until every curve of her body mirrors mine, until our lines start to match.

Eventually, I sigh and sit up.

"I've got to get back to those damn construction workers. They're not used to working with materials that can't be replaced at Home Depot. Come down with me?" I ask, not ready to let her go yet.

"I'll be down in a minute," she says. "Just let me wash up."

I kiss her one more time. "You know I was a hit man for the mob once? So you'd better get to work on your body count if you want to live up to my sterling example."

"Whatever, Damon," she says. "Keep trying to cover up the fact that you're incredibly sensitive and generous. It's totally working."

"Believe what you want, crazy girl," I tell her and stroll out of the room. "I loved that damn job. Vampire version of a free-range chicken farm. Guilt-free all you can eat."

"Why'd you quit, then?" she challenges.

I turn back and give her a crooked smile. "Those mob guys are bossy as all hell. So I ate one." I wink at her. "HR hates that shit."

The sound of her laugher follows me out into the hallway and I toss the ring box in the air and catch it again, smiling to myself. That didn't look like a 'no' face to me. Ten points for the home team.

* * *

_Author's Note: If you're smiling right now, press that little "favorite story" button… Plus, if you want to see how Damon gets back at Caroline for upsetting Elena, push the "follow story/author" button! I promise you'll be glad you did. _

_I'm planning on posting another mini-chapter on Friday, because I have a no good very bad feeling about the new episode and I fully believe in literary Prozac._

_But in general I'm planning on weekly updates for this story. Taking a vote: what would you prefer?_

_a. Mondays-cause they suck._

_b. Wednesdays- hump day, pre-TVD day, it's a natural fit!_

_c. Fridays- to comfort and cheer us after the heart-wrenching-ness that is TVD. _

_d. Saturday-more time to read on the weekends_

_*Thanks to Arabean for another great cover shot icon!_


	2. The Great Ring Swap

_Author's Note: This takes place after Ch 60 of Desperate Love but before the epilogue. _

**Chapter 2: The Great Ring Swap**

**DAMON POV**

I take a sip of scotch and enjoy the smoky flavor sliding over my tongue, the perfect accompaniment to the peaceful silence of the boarding house. Today is the first day of quiet since the contractors finished and it is fan-fucking-tastic. Raising my glass with a smirk, I toast the first night of soundproof glory that I plan on truly, thoroughly enjoying.

The front door slams.

"Da_mon_! Damon freaking Salvatore, you have some serious explaining to do!" A freight train of pissed off barrels into the living room, blonde curls streaming out behind her as she blurs to within punching distance. I raise an eyebrow and don't budge.

"Yes, my darling?"

Predictably, she hits me in the stomach, and it takes all of my considerable back and ab muscles to stay steady and not buckle because man, my future sister-in-law packs a hell of a punch.

"What do you need, snookums?" I coo at her.

"Your heart, in the garbage disposal, you thieving little- aragh!" she breaks off with an inarticulate sound of frustration and shoves her ring at me.

"There was a maker's mark inside my band. A tiny little designer stamp. And do you know what?"

"What, love muffin?"

I caught Stefan calling her his little unicorn last week, and it took me three days to stop laughing. This joke isn't going to lose its savor for a long time.

"It's not there anymore, Damon," she hisses. "And do you know why?"

"The gold paint wore off?" I guess. "I told Stefan to go K-mart instead of the Dollar Store, but you know how he is about taking my advice."

She pushes the ring at me like she intends to implant it in my nostril, which she very well might.

"Because this isn't my ring. Where is _my_ ring?"

I take it out of my pocket and flip it to her.

"You don't have much of an eye for gemstones, do you? Took you three days. And you know what they say, Blondie. You shouldn't flash your valuables around if you want to keep them." I stroll over and add another log to the fire. "Oh, and I want mine back. Stefan might as well save a few bucks on his second wife. I'll save the cubic zirconia for her."

Caroline turns red, then slightly purple, and then takes a deep breath. She examines the ring closely, and then puts it on her finger and stuffs the fake one in her purse with a pointed glare in my direction.

"You're going to regret this," she promises.

I believe her. She's a devious, terrible woman, but she's great for entertainment. I feel a twinge of dark satisfaction. Serves her right for making Elena cry.

"I don't know. I thought you'd take it as a victory." I saunter toward the door. "After all, it _is_ the only time in my immortal existence I've watched the Home Shopping Network."

She stops me with a hand on my arm. I give it a puzzled look, because it doesn't appear to be trying to re-configure my bone structure.

"Damon, you know she'll say yes. All you have to do is ask her," Caroline says in a low, kind voice.

I press my lips together and glance away.

"I'm serious, Damon," she says. "There's no reason for you to be nervous. She adores you and she wants to be with you forever."

I don't answer, opening the door but then pausing again, my fingers tight on the doorknob.

"I'll help you pick out a ring," she coaxes. "Come on, you don't want your brother to beat you to the altar, do you? We could have a double wedding…"

This is not the first time she's mentioned a double wedding. Knowing Caroline, she'd design some kind of incestuous monogram for all four of us, and skywrite the sucker for the ceremony.

"I-," I cut myself off and shake my head once, moving away from her.

Caroline chases after me and plants herself directly in my path. "Come on, Damon. I know we play around, but you know I care about you, and I know how you get. She. Loves. You," she says, poking me in the chest with each word. "Am I going to have to get _her_ to freaking propose, or what?"

I clear my throat and swallow. "There's just one thing, that I can't-," my voice is strained and I pause.

She leans closer. "What? You can tell me, I swear to God I won't even tell Stefan. You know I always keep your secrets when it's important."

For a second, I almost feel a little guilty, and then I remember Elena crying in the bathtub.

"I'm just worried about how I'll look in a tux," I confide in her, my eyes wide and vulnerable.

I'm poised on the balls of my feet before I deliver the punch line, but she nearly catches me, taking a chunk out of my shirt as I escape with every bit of speed I can squeeze out of 170 years. I'm grinning as I run, even as I hear her screeching my name.

Once I'm safely hidden in the woods, I slow to a walk and start to whistle, reaching in my pocket to run a finger over the diamond ring hidden there. On the second cubic zirconia, I had them inscribe a maker's mark. I doubt she figures it out by the wedding. If she's nice to me, I'll give it to her for their tenth anniversary.

* * *

_Author's Note: There might be some rampant Salvatore nudity coming up if enough of you favorite and/or follow this story. Or maybe I'm just flat-out bribing you, ;-) _

_While you're waiting for the next update, and the rampant Salvatore nudity, head over and check out shipperjunkie's fic: "Landslide." An absolutely gorgeous one-shot about Elena growing "old" as a vampire and Damon slipping in and out of her life until she finally can't keep letting him go. Funny, epic, enthralling, sweet, sexy and only the smallest pinch of bittersweet. I promise you'll forget to blink or swallow for the whole 10,000 words; I know I did._

_After seeing 4x16, I say this: can we please get up a petition for Steroline to the CWS writers? It would be just too lovely to get to see that dynamic onscreen, plus the happy little family of four we have in this fic could be a "reality." Please, Santa? It's March, so you can't pretend you're too busy..._


	3. Historical Re-enactment

_Author's Note: For those of you who were wondering, we will indeed be finding out the story behind the dark bit of lace that Damon uses as a bookmark in "Tomorrow's Rose" and Out of the Cold", but it's a few chapters down the line yet. And because everybody has been so awesome and enthusiastic about this story, we might just have to have a extra chapter this week!_

_Also, if after 4x17, anybody is in the mood to see Elena and Damon share a feed that ends a little bit more ah-hem, romantically, head on over to my website to check out a one-shot with that very scenario. michellehazenbooks dot com /willing/ Adults only, please..._

* * *

**Historical Re-enactment**

**ELENA POV**

I pause halfway up the stairs from the basement. It smells just a touch musty because it's a basement and I don't care how rich you are or how many de-humidifying devices Damon's mounted on the ceiling, you can't change that. But it also smells like almond-scented wood polish and ancient stone and just a hint of copper and ice from the freezer full of blood bags I just visited.

From my position on the third stair I can hear the expanse of empty house, weighty and contented above my head, and the sound of people arguing from the kitchen. Stefan's calm, placating tone, the jittery clicking of Caroline's heels as she paces, and the high-pitched drone of her soliloquy. I smile in spite of myself. Damon and I have been gone for a week, touring colleges with Jeremy, and it's good to be home.

I head for the kitchen to heat up my snack. Cold blood still sends me blurring for the bathroom, even though Damon says I'll eventually get used to it, so it is worth jumping into the middle of Caroline's latest drama to have the use of the microwave. Besides, Stefan'll have her calmed down in another five minutes, tops, and her voice is only mid-range shrill which means that Damon isn't there to get her all stirred up again.

"I just don't understand how he can think that keeping his stanky old cow pasture is more important than giving _children _a safe place to play. I mean, they were playing basketball in the street, Stefan. They need a place to go. So anyway, I called Nicole, because her cousin sells him hay, to see if she could talk to her cousin to get him to talk to Mr. Mackey, but she didn't want to do it!" Caroline makes a frustrated noise. "It's like nobody has a sense of community pride anymore."

"Why can't we just offer him more money?" Stefan asks. "He can buy more pasture somewhere else. He's a businessman, I'm sure it's just a matter of dollars and cents."

"Because it's the city's money, Stefan, not ours." Her voice softens slightly. "And you already help with all my fundraisers."

"So? If I ever did one, you'd help," Stefan insists.

"That's different," Caroline insists. "You can't be financing every one of my projects or we'll be broke in a year."

"Why not?" I challenge, giving Stefan a sympathetic look as I head for the cupboard that holds the coffee mugs. "You let Damon buy you an orphanage."

"He did not _buy _me an orphanage, Elena," she glares. "He graciously donated a year's operating expense so they could get on their feet to do their own fundraising, which they are doing. And I was teaching him a lesson."

"The value of gambling?" I raise an eyebrow. "I'm not sure I like the values you're instilling in my boyfriend."

"It was a fair bet, and he should have known he would lose," Caroline insists.

"Well, why don't we make a new bet?" Stefan asks. "I bet that when he gets back, he kisses Elena within the first two minutes of getting into the house. If I'm right, you have to let me buy that pasture and donate it to the city."

She glares at him. "That's totally cheating."

"Yeah, give it up, Stefan," Damon says, entering the kitchen.

I roll my eyes at him, because I know how much trouble he goes to in order to sneak up on us and make it look effortless. Just once I want to be able to surprise him when he's wasting a good thirty minutes tiptoeing down a hallway and make him feel like an ass. Just once.

"Just let Storm do what she does best. My money's on less than 36 hours before she gets her greedy little hands on her prize plot of Cowshit Central," Damon says before turning his attention to me.

He gives me a sexy little eye flair. "Hello gorgeous." He crosses his arms over his chest. "I'm still trying to decide who I want to win this little bet."

I tilt my chin down and drop my eyes to the buckle of his belt. "I think it would be funny if Stefan had to buy a cow pasture."

"Very funny," Damon agrees seriously as he crosses the kitchen and takes my face in his hands. I smile against his lips because I know this is going to make Caroline lecture the heck out of us. But as soon as his lips touch mine, I forget all about revenge and focus my attention on his talented tongue instead.

When he pulls away, I smile up into his crystal blue eyes. "Missed you this morning."

"Uh-huh," he agrees, his thumb tracing the edge of my lower lip. I become aware of a rhythmic drumming sound.

"I'm pretty sure I owe you two cow pastures now," Stefan says dryly and I identify the sound as Caroline's manicured nails tapping impatiently on the counter.

"Just tell me when they're done so I can open my eyes," she complains.

"Why do I have to be the voyeur?" Stefan complains.

Damon steals one more kiss and walks across the kitchen to start the microwave. I frown. "What are you doing?"

"Re-heating the blood you forgot in there," he says with a cocky smile.

"I told you to stop it with the snarky little nicknames," Stefan tells his brother, picking up the conversation as if it had never paused.

"No way!" Caroline says. "That was from the X-men." She gives Damon a suspicious stare. "I kind of like it."

"Storm?" Stefan says, puzzled.

"She controls the weather," I explain. "Kind of like how Caroline could get a volcano to grow in the middle of Mystic Falls if that's what she wanted it to do."

"And make it erupt pink French poodles, to match the color scheme," Damon agrees.

Stefan narrows his eyes at his fiancée. "Don't get any ideas for the wedding."

"Being one of the X-men would be way cool," she says, ignoring him. "Way more fun than being a vampire."

"Yeah, psychic powers and electrical storms, and being able to turn into other people whenever you wanted," I agree. "So much better than tearing out throats."

"And then there's the eye candy," Caroline points out.

"Wolverine," we sigh in near-perfect unison.

Stefan's brows snap down and Damon smirks contemptuously.

"You can't tell me you would take some mountain man with overgrown fingernails over a sleekly muscular, urbanely handsome vampire," he protests.

Caroline and I share a look.

"They would," Stefan says, crossing his arms.

"You're both lovely," I offer placatingly.

"But Hugh Jackman…" Caroline groans.

"Hugh Jackman is not sexier than we are," Damon protests.

I shoot an apologetic look at Damon. "Honey, you're beautiful. But those muscles…"

"It's that scene," Caroline says dreamily.

"The one where he jumps naked over the waterfall," I agree. Caroline, Bonnie and I must have replayed that scene fifteen times.

"We don't have to put up with this, do we?" Stefan asks his brother.

"Nope," Damon says, pulling out his phone. "Only one thing to do."

"See if you can get the red-eye. Those are always cheaper," Stefan suggests.

"What are you going to do?" Caroline asks suspiciously.

"Eat him," Damon answers. "Obviously."

* * *

**XOXO**

* * *

**ELENA POV**

"Caroline, seriously, how do you not remember the spot where my boyfriend rescued you from a crazed werewolf?"

"I was kinda freaking out, okay?" Caroline protests, studying the nearby trees. "I still don't understand why they thought it would be fun to send us on a scavenger hunt of places we've nearly died."

"They're guys, Caroline. But yeah, I would have much rather gone on a hunt of all the places we've had sex in the woods."

Caroline giggles. "That would have taken all day, and then we'd never get the big prize."

"How good can it be?" I gripe, folding the papers holding clues we've already solved and shoving them into my pocket. "I'm not going to get the prize I want with you here."

Caroline sighs impatiently. "Whatever, Elena. You get to see Damon naked like every day. It's not that much of a prize."

"Did you kill a vampire hunter you didn't tell me about?" I shoot her an incredulous look. "Cause you're acting crazy."

"Damon's the one acting crazy. He's not caving and I have hinted and wheedled in every way I can think of, which, trust me," she gives me a serious look. "That's a lot of ways. I don't believe for a second he's not interested in marrying you. Not that I think he cares about weddings or papers or whatever, but it's _you. _I can't believe he'd pass up a single opportunity to get you more committed to him."

"He thinks he's very stubborn and manly for not proposing yet," I tell her.

"Hmm," says Caroline. "How many pieces of jewelry has he gotten you since I got engaged?"

I silently hold up three fingers and she smiles.

"That boy does guilt so beautifully."

I nod in agreement, my fingers going automatically to my new fire opal necklace. He could get me jewelry made of rubber bands and pencils and I'd love it. There's just something comforting about wearing something he picked out because he thought I would like it.

"You _have _told him you'd say yes, right?" Caroline presses, giving up on any pretense of looking for our next clue.

I raise my eyebrows at her in amusement. "Um, I'm not the expert here, but I'm pretty sure you're supposed to wait until they ask."

Caroline rolls her eyes. "They're men, Elena."

"That's what I was hoping," I agree dryly.

"I mean, they're big fraidy cats. They're not going to ask unless they are sure, absolutely 100% certain you'll say yes, and even then," she smiles, her eyes sparkling. "They get all cute and nervous. Stefan stuttered through the whole thing, and he must have licked his lips like 20 times. I was getting ready to offer to do it for him."

She smiles happily in recollection and I brace myself to hear their engagement story again. _And then he got down on one knee and I almost told him not to, because it was right in the street and all dirty and stuff but then I thought, hey, I'm only getting one proposal and it's worth at least one ruined pair of slacks._

But instead she surprises me. "Anyway, you need to _tell _him you'd say yes. I know he's normally good with hints and all, but for this," she hesitates, and I hold back a smile.

"What?" I prompt her. She doesn't know he's already all but proposed, and I'm definitely not going to tell her.

She takes a step closer and lowers her voice. "It's _Damon_, Elena. And I know he has the biggest head of any male ever born but when it comes to you, sometimes he's like-, I don't know. I just think maybe he needs a little extra reassurance about you, and it wouldn't hurt if you were really clear with him."

"Trust me, Caroline," I tell her dryly. "Damon Salvatore doesn't have a doubt in his mind about how I feel about him, and neither does anybody else."

She raises a sculpted eyebrow in silent challenge, and I suddenly realize that I didn't tell him yes, not really. Not in so many words. But he knows. Doesn't he?

"That tree!" Caroline exclaims, her eyes focusing on something over my shoulder. "That's it, for sure this time."

"About time," I tell her, digging around until I find a small piece of paper in a hollow in the roots of the tree.

"Text for further instructions," I read aloud.

Caroline pulls out her phone and zaps off a text to both Salvatores. It only takes a few seconds to get a reply.

"Head for the namesake of the vortex of all evil," she reads. "What the heck does that mean?"

"No problem," I tell her, and lead the way east.

When we arrive at the base of Mystic Falls, I start peeking under bushes and overturning rocks. "They could have put a bow on it, whatever it is. That would have been a lot easier."

"Um, Elena," Caroline says, sounding distracted. "I think you may have gotten your wish."

I follow her gaze to the top of the waterfall and my jaw drops open at the sight of two naked Salvatores waving back at us. They share a glance and then they jump, their pale, muscular bodies outlined clearly against the water as they fall the hundred or so feet to the pool below.

When they hit the water, it throws up a wave that peppers Caroline and me with cold water droplets, but we don't budge.

"Can we get that again in slow motion?" Caroline asks, awed.

"Like twice a day?" I agree, swallowing.

Damon pops up first and shakes his head, shining droplets leaping free of his inky hair.

"Hi honey," he grins.

Just then, Stefan surfaces behind him and dunks his brother, and we have to wait for them to stop roughhousing before they wade out of the water, the slow reveal of nude male bodies glistening with water enough to make my mouth dry as dust.

Caroline's eyes are glued to Stefan, but I have to admit that I'm enjoying the full spectrum of available view.

"Damn. Fine. Genes." I murmur to Caroline, who nods wordlessly.

"Better than a hairy Aussie?" Damon challenges.

Caroline coughs and tries to regain the upper hand. "I can't believe you guys just got naked together."

Stefan and Damon share a scornful glance. "Nobody used to wear bathing suits, Caroline," Stefan informs her.

"Because they were a fucking stupid idea," Damon maintains. "I mean, why wear clothes you intend to get wet just so you have to dry them out again?"

"Why, did we embarrass you?" Stefan teases.

Damon opens his arms and goes after Caroline, his penis swinging with every step. "How about a hug for your favorite brother-in-law?"

"Elena!" she screams, taking off at full speed. I leap at Damon before he can follow, wrapping my legs around his waist.

He stops dead, his arms going automatically around my waist as he gives me a pleased smile. "Good morning to you, too." He steals a kiss. "That was a serious mistake, Ms. Gilbert."

"Does this feel wrong to you?" I tease, tightening my legs around him.

"Surrendering yourself to my evil clutches?" he shakes his head. "Can only result in one thing."

I perk up. "Yeah?"

He bends his knees and with one powerful jump we're both airborne for a moment before we crash into the frigid water at the base of the falls.

I come up sputtering and glaring. "Didn't anybody ever tell you that vampires hate to swim?"

He nods his head toward the side of the pool and I notice that we're alone. "Little brother finally figured out how to tell when a girl wants to be chased."

He gives me a wicked grin, but I hesitate when he leans in to kiss me.

"Damon, the other night, in your bathtub-"

"Oh, it was my pleasure, I assure you."

I giggle. "Not _that _night. The one when I was crying and you were trying to cheer me up. I just realized that I never really said that my answer was yes."

"Somebody's trying to wheedle her way back into that little box," Damon teases, then fixes me with a serious look. "Patience is a virtue, Elena."

I pinch him under the cover of the water and he pouts adorably. "I mean that I love you, you jerk."

"Oh, well, when you put it like that," he says, eyes sparkling, "you're pretty hard to resist."

I groan and try to push him away, but he just cuddles me closer, undeterred by my struggles. "Never mind."

"Hey," he says, his voice low.

I peek up at him, watching his eyes darken the way they always do when he's feeling possessive.

"I love you, too."

His voice is rough, but there's not a hint of nervousness in it. Caroline's wrong: Damon knows me better than anyone. And so he knows exactly what I can't live without.

I smile mischievously. "I hear people used to think it was silly to wear clothes while you were swimming."

Damon smiles back, his blue eyes warming me despite the temperature of the water. "Terribly silly," he agrees, pulling my shirt over my head.

"You up for a historical re-enactment?"

"Am I ever."

* * *

_Author's Note: If anybody's interested in an alternate version of Delena's 4x17 trip to New York (with less Rebekah and more steamy Delena smut), Goldnox has a gorgeous new two-shot out called "Braided Lies and Knotted Truth" -__Damon takes humanity-free Elena to NY after 4x15, needing a change of scenery and trying to handle an out-of-control baby vampire. He's searching for the strength to keep the fragile strands of their relationship together, while she hunts blood. But sometimes, even when you don't find what you were looking for, it's just what you need. / Delena_

_And another POLL, because I love to keep you all happy. So, I have a set number of chapters for this fic, and I can release them faster, or slower. So…_

_Do we want this fic to end BEFORE or AFTER the end of TVD Season 4?_

_a. Release chapters faster, and end at the same time as Season 4. After the finale, we'll all be too busy reading new post-finale fics anyway, because CWS will likely have changed the whole universe and killed off whatever is left of the cast. Elena, Dr. Fell and 3 cockroaches will be left twiddling their thumbs in the crater where Mystic Falls used to be. _

_b. Release chapters slower, and keep going after Season 4 ends. We'll need the comfort when there are no more new episodes to look forward to, and something tells me the season finale isn't going to be a happily ever after kind of ending. _


	4. In From the Cold

_Author's Note: __Remember folks, this is a sequel to my Season 4 re-write, "Desperate Love" so if some of the details aren't exactly what you remember from the series, that's why. And if you want a Season 4 without Silas and sire bonds and where no brothers are buried, head on over and check out Desperate Love._

_This chapter is early, because Goldnox could talk me into building a submarine out of screen doors if she put her mind to it. And latbfan has 37 votes on "random posting cycle." And they're both on your side. _

_Soundtrack: Rosie's Lullaby by Norah Jones_

* * *

**Chapter 4: In From the Cold**

**ELENA POV**

The crackling of the fire is our soundtrack, the rest of the boarding house patiently silent around us. I resist the urge to curse and spoil the moment as I tug on the stubborn yarn that's managed to tie a whole new kind of knot around my knitting needle. I give up and close my eyes, letting my head drop back against Damon's soothing fingers. He obligingly stops toying with my hair and massages my scalp instead.

There's a whisper of paper as he turns a page, but his clever fingers don't pause in their ministrations and I feel my muscles start to unwind into the forgiving leather of the couch.

"I love these new couches," I tell Damon. "They soak up the warmth of the fire until I just melt into them like hot wax."

"Blondie knows her business when it comes to furniture," he admits. "But don't tell her I said that."

He watches the flames, colors shifting and changing within their depths. Always familiar, and yet never quite knowable. "Warmth is a luxury for vampires."

"Is that why you like bubble baths?" I ask, tilting my head just enough that I can see him without interrupting the movement of his fingers in my hair.

He smiles wickedly at me. "I like them because they come with my favorite bath toy."

I snuggle closer to his side, disturbing the book he's reading. He marks his place with a scrap of dark lace and sets it aside, lifting me onto his lap instead.

"Why is it so quiet for once?" I wonder, rubbing my nose along the curve of his neck.

"Stefan and Caroline went dancing."

I pull back, the corners of my mouth turning down. "I want to go dancing."

Damon quirks an eyebrow. "With them?"

I make a face and he chuckles. "Maybe not," I admit.

My boyfriend scoops me up as if I weigh no more than a kitten, spinning us playfully before setting me on my feet and stepping seamlessly into a bow that makes it look like 1864 was yesterday. He kisses my hand and peeks up at me, eyes twinkling with a mischief that is thoroughly contemporary.

"May I have this dance, Miss Gilbert?"

I tilt my head and pretend to consider. "It's rather forward of you to ask. We lack a chaperone."

He straightens and draws me closer. "And if I promise to comport myself only as a gentleman?"

My eyes land on the sensual curve of his lips and I have to swallow before answering. "I don't know if I'd believe it of you."

He raises our hands, folding mine securely inside his, the elaborate D on his ring winking in the firelight.

"When it comes to you, you could believe most anything about me." He strokes my bare arm as I place my other hand on his waist, my flesh tingling in a rush that goes all the way to my nipples.

"Maybe not that I'd be a gentleman," he admits, his lips curving. "But most other things."

He sways gently with me and I struggle to catch my breath. It's embarrassing that he can do this to me after we've been dating for so long already. Every time he touches me, it's like I've been waiting years for it.

I press a soft kiss to his collarbone, tasting his skin with just the tip of my tongue. He edges his hips away from me almost imperceptibly.

"Miss Gilbert, I'll thank you not to be taking liberties with my person."

I smile up at him. "I was just remembering our first dance in front of the fireplace. I was scared to death, coming over here after I told you how I felt and you didn't say a thing in return. But then you held out your hand to me and I thought that was it. I thought after that, it was all going to be easy."

I roll my eyes at how wrong I was.

His eyes darken, but his tone is teasing. "Did you just call me easy?"

I nip his lower lip in mock punishment and frown at him. "You ran all the way to Thailand after that, so I guess not."

He runs his tongue across his lip as if savoring the taste of my bite. "I could be easier, if you keep doing that."

I lean up on my toes and kiss him, stroking his tongue slowly with mine, because I know the way he likes it now.

I leave the kiss only to lay my head against his chest, dancing and cuddling and resting, all at once. He can make the simplest thing into so many things, this beautiful man.

"I'm in love with you," I admit.

I hear his breath catch, even though I've told him hundreds, thousands of times. "Good, because I wasn't going to let you keep using me for my body for much longer," he says sternly.

I laugh. "Sure you weren't."

I step back and sink into a jean-clad curtsey. "Thank you for the dance, Mr. Salvatore."

"You curtsey like a man," he tells me with a smirk and I return it with a glare.

"I do not."

He places a hand on my belly and one on the small of my back and guides my movement. "Your corset wouldn't have let you bend at the waist, so you sink straight down. Use your knees instead."

Damon tips my hips forward and nudges my back straight, urging me lower. His fingers are brushing the zipper of my jeans and I feel a little thrill in my belly as he guides me back to standing.

"There. Better." He winks and turns away, heading for the tray of decanters. I watch him for a second longer, my heart stuttering as unevenly as a human's. I don't need blood to make me feel alive. Not when I have him.

I blink and reclaim my place on the warmed leather of the sofa, determined not to act like an infatuated idiot. Damon turns back and I busy myself with my knitting needles.

"You're not half old enough to knit," he tells me cynically.

"I will be by the time I finish your scarf," I tell him, poking unenthusiastically at the knotted lumps in the two inches of scarf I've managed so far. Everybody said knitting was supposed to be relaxing and I definitely needed that after my transition, but it's not working out so well.

"Take your time," he advises. "I'm going to need seventy or so years to adjust to the idea of wearing something that ugly."

I gasp, wrinkling my nose at him in mostly feigned indignation. "My scarf is not ugly. It's painstakingly…unique."

Damon raises his eyebrows. "Yeah. Painstakingly…something."

He takes a sip of his drink and immediately spews it toward the fire.

I forget my irritation and leap off the couch, scanning the room instinctively for signs of an enemy before I blur to his side.

"What is it? Is it vervain?"

"Worse," he says, wiping his mouth and looking thunderously angry. "Apple juice."

I frown. "Apple juice? I thought you got it out of a decanter."

He goes back to the tray, opening each bottle in turn and sniffing them. "Apple juice. _Goddamn_ her!"

I bite my lip, trying to stifle a laugh.

"She mixed it into my liquor so that I didn't notice the smell right away." His expression is pained as he touches one of the smaller decanters. "This was a fifteen hundred dollar bottle of Scotch. I don't even know if any more of that year's distillation still exists."

He shakes his head, still staring. I wince and stroke his back hesitantly. "That's pretty low, even for Caroline. She probably didn't know how expensive it was."

"The fuck she didn't," he says, sounding less upset than I'd expected. Normally, we'd be to the sweeping-up-broken-glass portion of the evening by now.

"What did you do this time?"

Damon smirks, setting down his glass. "Swapped out her precious solitaire for a gen-u-ine cubic zirconia off the Home Shopping Channel."

I gasp, my hand flying with delighted horror to my mouth. "Damon, you didn't! You're lucky that _wasn't_ vervain. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that nobody makes my girl cry," he tells me, casting one more half-disappointed, half-admiring look at his ruined liquor collection.

Tears spring to my eyes. For me? Just because I was being so silly that one day, crying in his bathtub after Caroline and Stefan got engaged?

"You're going to, if you're not careful," I warn him, grabbing him in a tight hug and trying not to sniffle against his shirt.

His hands drift down to cup my bottom. "I bet I can make you smile again," he purrs.

I press closer to him, my nipples sensitive to the hard planes of his chest.

Damon's hands creep under the hem of my shirt, his thumbs brushing the inner curves of my hipbones, just above my low-riding jeans.

I feel a little lightheaded, so I hang onto his broad shoulders for balance, tipping my head back so I can see his eyes gleaming with a possessive kind of heat.

"I'll just bet you can," I agree.

* * *

**XOXO**

* * *

**DAMON POV**

I pause beside the couch, watching my girlfriend sleep. The firelight casts golden, flickering shadows across the luscious curves of her bare breasts. I hate to cover her up, but I don't want her to be cold. As a vampire, it won't hurt her, but she can still feel the chill.

I brush my knuckles across her smooth belly, satisfied with the temperature of her fire-warmed skin. Her hand moves restlessly across the half of the couch that I just vacated and I touch her hand, waiting until she quiets before I move again.

I pad toward the kitchen without bothering with pants, enjoying the languorous pull of well-used muscles. It's the closest a vampire gets to tired without being wounded, this satisfied lassitude that drugs my overactive mind and quiets the world around me.

I open the cupboard above the fridge, smiling to myself. Caroline thinks she's clever, but I hid my best bourbon in here before I pulled my last prank on her. I'd have put the Camaro in storage, too, but I don't think she'll duplicate her pranks. Since she already cost me a world-class detailing after she filled it with Count Chocula, I figured my car was safe. My three favorite first editions and my best leather jacket are now in the safe in the library, too. The one Stefan _doesn't _have a combination to.

The Waterford crystal decanter twinkles cheerfully in the low light when I take it out of the cupboard, smiling smugly as I pull the stopper and tip it toward my glass. Nothing happens.

It is two-thirds full. I frown and attempt to pour again. The level of the liquid doesn't budge. My eyes widen incredulously and I give it a shake, watching the amber substance wobble slightly. Just like Jell-O.

No fucking way.

I stare at the world's most expensive Jell-O Jiggler, my fingers slowly tightening on the crystal.

This is war.

* * *

_Author's Note: BEST NEWS EVER! All other author-y note things can wait. Because I have the best news ever. Goldnox has posted a sequel to her heartbreakingly beautiful Delena extravaganza, "Mirrors and Broken Things." The sequel is called "Clocks and Closed Doors," and it is based around 4x07 "My Brother's Keeper" (aka Delena FINALLY FREAKING GETTING TOGETHER). It is going to contain expanded canon and (probably sexy as hell) non-canon scenes, and a little gilded birdy told me that it might have a happy ending. And because Goldnox wrote it, it will probably also contain masterful symbolism that will make the authors among us turn green with envy, cute and funny banter that will make you wriggle with happiness, and steamy hot Delena smut that will make you forget all about a certain evil authoress who shall not be named who wrote a T-rated sequel to a very M-rated fic. _


	5. Tears of a Clown

_Author's Note: In this chapter, you'll get to see Kyle! He is a character that was introduced in "Desperate Love," and in case you didn't read that, he's a muscle-bound bartender from New York, who is covered with tattoos of musicals to remind him of specific life lessons that he finds meaningful. Oh, and he's a vampire hunter. And he's gay. Just read "Desperate Love" already- you know you're curious._

_Timeline: Unless otherwise mentioned, weeks and even months can go by between chapters of this fic in the story. It's a very loose timeline. So keep that in mind going forward._

* * *

**Chapter 5: Tears of a Clown**

**DAMON POV**

"Just give it up. I'm a vampire. It's not like my neck gets cold," I tell Elena.

She frowns down at the knitting in her lap. I swear if she were a human, that scarf would have given her 2 aneurysms and an arrhythmia by now. But she's Elena, so she can't possibly give up on an obviously lost cause. Which, of course, is the only reason she ended up with the likes of me.

I make a grab for the scarf but she hangs on tight. "I can do it, Damon. I just need to practice. It's important to me."

I give the scarf a narrow-eyed look. That thing is going to be sorry once I get it alone. I decide on a valorous retreat for the moment and kick my legs up onto the sofa, shifting Elena back between my knees so she can recline against my chest while she gets herself all worked up over her new "relaxing" hobby.

"It's important to you to tie string into knots?" I ask skeptically.

She bends her head over her needles with more concentration than her lack of movement requires. This has my suspicious side halfway up the ladder into the alarm bell tower but I can't figure out what she could possibly be hiding from me about the world's ugliest winter accessory.

"What's this really about? Are you trying to practice keeping your frustration under wraps so you don't lose it the first time Jeremy brings some bimbo home and tells you she's the One?" I ask, sneaking my thumb under the hem of her shirt to stroke the soft skin hidden there. "Because I'm pretty sure it's your job to freak out on him when he's being stupid, which is most of the time."

"I wanted to make you something," she says, tugging at the hopelessly snarled yarn.

"You make me happy," I point out, kissing her hair. "You make me really hot. You can make me take off my clothes, too, if you put a little effort into it."

She laughs and swats my knee half-heartedly.

"Tell me," I growl into her ear. "You know I can torture it out of you."

She shivers. I've recently developed a very effective technique for getting Elena to admit things she thinks she wants to hide from me. Sometimes the ends justify the means. And sometimes the means are so good I wish she had more secrets from me.

"I just have to save most of the trust money so Jeremy can go to college, you know that. So I can't spend it, and you get me such nice presents all the time, I just-," she pauses, fidgeting with the seam on my jeans. "I just wanted to get you a good present too and I thought if I couldn't buy you something maybe it would at least mean something to you if you knew how hard I worked on it." She tosses the whole mess of yarn onto the coffee table, sighing. "I know you don't like it. I'll think of something else."

Fuck.

"You know, I never minded being an asshole until you came along," I tell her, wondering how I'm going to dig myself out of this one. "Elena, you know-"

I hear running steps on the pavement of the driveway and stiffen. The front door flies open and Stefan shouts, "Caroline, don't!"

I move to boost Elena off my lap but she's already gone. She collides with Caroline, abbreviating the blonde's flying leap into a tumble of arms and legs as they wrestle each other across the living room floor.

I sit up with a grin. "Saved by a catfight. My favorite interruption."

Stefan frowns, unused to seeing the girls going after each other this way. "Should we stop them?"

"How do we have the same genes?" I scoff, standing up for a better view. "They're fighting over me. This is fucking awesome."

Stefan glares. "They're not fighting over you."

I raise an eyebrow. "Yeah? You were yelling at Vampire Barbie not to attack_ Elena_? What'd she do, borrow her Jimmy Choos and scuff 'em?"

Elena surges to her feet and kicks Caroline flat, then plants a boot across her throat and growls a warning, eyes bloody and fierce. For the first time, I realize they're not playing. Which I guess I should have figured out earlier. They're practically Salvatores now but they've never adopted our roughhousing habits.

Elena raises the stake she took from Caroline and snaps it viciously over her knee, pointing the splintered end at her friend. "If you ever," she hisses around her fangs, "bring a stake in this house again, I will put it in your chest, do you understand me?"

"Whoa, whoa, easy, Killer," I say, wrapping my arms around her and putting a little bit of my elder-vampire strength to work as she explodes in a predator's instinctive reaction to being attacked from behind. She stops fighting as soon as she realizes it's me but she's still glaring at Caroline, who's lying on the floor looking shocked and hurt and more than a little ridiculous in a well-cut but soggy jacket covered with brightly colored polka-dots and peeling shreds of darker-colored fabric.

I resist a snarky comment about her clown suit having the mange because my newest pranking brilliance needs to take a backseat for the moment to the fact that my toddler-vampire progenies appear to be on the verge of ending each other in the supernatural creature version of a sisterly hair-pulling fight.

I pull the two pieces of wooden stake out of Elena's hands and toss them away. Elena's cheekbones are still dark with a lacy network of veins, her blood-filled eyes locked with singular focus on her vanquished prey. I grab her wrists and turn her away from Caroline, squeezing with enough force to remind her who is the strongest among us.

"Enough," I demand.

She struggles against my hold and I shake her once, hard, letting a little blood creep into my eyes as I step closer to make the most of the difference in our heights. Her head bows slightly and she drops her eyes to the floor. I loosen my grip and stroke my thumbs over the veins in her wrists.

"Breathe," I murmur, waiting for her to relax.

Stefan pulls Caroline back to her feet and checks her over, glaring at Elena and me. I ignore him, waiting for Elena's human side to regain the upper hand. When her cheeks are creamy and clear, I let her go. She turns back to Caroline, not a hint of apology in her expression.

"What were you thinking?" she spits at her friend.

Caroline looks horrified. "I wasn't going to kill him. Jeez, Elena."

"You were going to gut stake me?" I say admiringly, clicking my tongue. "Nasty, nasty. Didn't the good sheriff raise you with any manners?"

"Manners?" She snaps, gesturing to her ruined jacket. "You Trojan-horse me and you want to talk about _manners_?"

"This has got to stop," Stefan declares, crossing his arms over his chest firmly. "This pranking thing has gone way too far. Caroline, I don't want you picking fights with Damon, and-," he looks at Elena and shakes his head, three brow-creases into his Disapproving Papa face. "Elena? Really?"

"Keep your bossy pants out of this," I tell him derisively as Elena sucks in an outraged breath. "Your girlfriend's the one who brought a gun to a knife fight. What, you afraid I'm going to rough her up?"

"I think if she came at you with a stake, things might get a little out of hand, yeah," Stefan says angrily. "You're impulsive, Damon, and-."

I punch him in the face.

"Trust me," I say darkly, while he crawls back to his feet. "That was pre-meditated."

Caroline steps in between us. "Have we all forgotten what is important here? He _melted _my beautiful Saint Laurent jacket! Melted it!" she says, her voice hitting a pitch that feels like it is re-arranging the bone structure of my inner ear.

"I gave you that jacket," I scoff. "I can melt it if I want to."

I grin as I give her a once-over, because she really does look awesomely awful.

"You gave me a freaking clown suit!" she shrieks.

"You seemed pretty grateful at the time," I drawl, remembering the squealing hug she'd given me at Christmas when she'd unwrapped what she thought was an Yves Saint Laurent jacket.

"Compelled somebody to change the sprinkler schedule, didn't you?" Stefan says in a carefully casual tone.

I don't look at him. He can take his half-assed sprinkler apology and shove it. He's ruined most of my enjoyment in a prank I worked on for months and I'm not going to let him steal what remains.

"You ruined our picnic," Caroline says through gritted teeth, crossing her arms in a way that spells suffering for me sometime in the very near future.

"I was just doing my brother a favor," I tell her, spreading my arms innocently. "Encouraging him to stop going cliché on his romantic date choices."

"I like picnics," she pouts, and I think I catch a glimmer of moisture in her blue eyes, but it's gone before I can be sure. "I_ liked _my jacket. I should have known you wouldn't give me something that nice unless you were going to take it away again."

"Yeah, you should have known," I agree blandly. For an instant I wonder if I should have gotten her a real Christmas present, too. She _had_ been really excited about that jacket.

_Which is why it made a great prank_, I remind myself.

"Come on, Damon," Stefan says. "We all get out of control sometimes. I just don't want you or Caroline to do anything you'll regret and with weapons involved, it's too easy to cross the line." He gestures at the pieces on the ground. "Elena lost her temper and it was only _Caroline._"

Elena shifts uncomfortably. "It's one thing to play fight. Stakes are totally different."

"That's my point," Stefan says, exasperated.

"Yeah, well why don't you cross-stitch up a copy of the house rules, then, _Mom_?" I tell him, taking an aggressive step forward. "Rule number one: no stakes when fighting with the psychopath."

His hands are slack at his sides, so I know I'm not going to get the fight I'm spoiling for. I glare at him. If he's going to be a little bitch, the least he could do is let me pound him into a fine paste for it.

"I'll be at the bar," I tell him flatly. "Feel free to use that time to go fuck yourself."

"Damon-," he whines, but I slam out the front door before he can finish. He's lucky I'm not pinning those house rules to his chest with a fucking hatchet. Dick.

The front door opens and closes again and I turn, my hands curling hopefully into fists, but it's Elena.

"I'm coming too," she tells me, her lips pressed together like she needs the cooling off period as much as I do. "I could use a drink."

"Fucking roommates," I agree. "I'll drive."

Kyle has two bourbons lined up by the time we make it from the door to the bar. I take the glass on the right and empty it, shaking my head at the coarse burn of cheap liquor. I leave the drink meant for Ric in front of his vacant stool. I'm so used to my little ritual that sometimes it doesn't even hurt anymore to see that glass. Especially since I know that stool's not always as empty as it looks.

"Wine or bourbon, sweetheart?" Kyle asks Elena as she takes the seat to my right.

"It's a bourbon day," she tells him. "Trust me."

He pours the third bourbon in a coffee mug, his answer to underage vampire drinking. "What happened?"

"Caroline tried to attack Damon and I kicked her ass," Elena says with a hint of pride. I have to smile at that, even though I still feel like re-defining my brother's sinus structure.

"Caroline attacks Damon twice a week," Kyle points out. "Three times on holiday weekends. Is all the gratuitous violence around here finally rubbing off on you?"

"She had a stake," Elena growls and Kyle chuckles, sending a conspiratorial smile my way.

"Good thing you haven't told her about all the times I've tried to stake you," he tells me, filling my glass. "That one's on the house. Consider it a toast to your discretion."

I toss back my free drink and slide my glass back to him.

Kyle fills it and looks to Elena. "What else happened? I haven't seen him three drinks deep over Caroline since the Count-Chocula-in-the-Camaro trick."

"Stefan implied that that he might kill Caroline accidentally," Elena says, giving my thigh a comforting squeeze.

"You want me to help you dig his grave?" Kyle asks sympathetically.

"As if I stake people I don't damn well mean to stake," I grumble.

"As if he'd hurt Caroline," Elena says indignantly and a reluctant smile tugs at the corner of my mouth again. She's too cute when she gets all protective like this. She's ruining my bad mood.

"Stefan did have a point on that one," I admit. "You totally throat-stomped her. She wasn't _really _going to stake me."

Kyle whistles. "You throat-stomped her?"

"Not hard," Elena says, reddening slightly.

Kyle pokes her playfully in the arm. "I haven't forgotten you going teeth-first for my jugular when I shot Damon with that crossbow. Remember?"

She glares at him. "I remember your horrible vervain glove. I thought I was dying."

"Sorry," Kyle tells her again.

"You've apologized for that like a hundred times," I complain. "Where's my apology for the damn crossbow?"

"Hold your breath, pretty boy. I hear your kind can keep it up for a looong time." He smiles brightly. "It'd be nice to have the quiet around here for once."

"You wish," I tell him, laying a hand on top of Elena's. She flexes her fingers so her nails score my thigh through my jeans and I shift uncomfortably at the rapidly tightening fit of my pants.

Kyle leans back against the wall of bottles and crosses one boot over the other. "So spill. I've got to hear the latest prank. It must have been good if Caroline was packing heat when she came after you."

"Yeah, what was the deal with the sprinklers? Was the jacket coated in water-soluble paint?" Elena asked skeptically. "It looked really realistic to be paint."

"Back in the 80's, there was this doll that was really popular for a while. It came in a hospital gown, like a baby or some bullshit," I tell her.

Elena gives me an odd look and pushes her empty mug toward Kyle. "One more, please?"

Kyle shakes his head. "No way. Every time I give you more than one drink, I have to put up with way too much PDA from you two."

I snatch up the bottle from his side of the bar. The vampire-hunter-turned-barkeep is surprisingly quick for a semi-mortal, but not quick enough to stop me. I pour her a drink with a smile.

Kyle glares at me. "You know I hate it when you get grabby with my booze, Salvatore."

"What kind of bartender refuses a lady a drink?" I say with a warning smile.

"Why do you know what kind of toys they had nearly thirty years ago?" Elena wants to know.

"Because once you bought the doll, the gimmick was that you put the gown in water and it dissolved and inside was its real clothes."

"How on earth would you know that?" Elena asks.

"I'm rich," I tell her. "And immortal. I have an unbelievable amount of free time. I can't spend all of it lounging around looking dangerous and sexy."

She crinkles her nose adorably and shakes her head at me in fond exasperation.

"I'm a lot more interested in what doll clothes have to do with Caroline trying to stake you than in what you do with your free time," Kyle says.

"She made my favorite bourbon a little more than it appeared to be," I tell him darkly. "So I thought I'd return the favor."

"Jell-O," Elena tells him with a wince. "And apple juice."

"So I tracked down the company and paid them an outrageous amount of money to dust off their old dissolving-cloth recipe and custom-make me a dummy Yves Saint Laurent jacket," I take a satisfied sip of my drink. "Which I then gave to Vampire Barbie for Christmas."

"I've seen that jacket," Kyle says. "That's a damn good copy, my friend. That'd pass on Fifth Avenue as the genuine article."

"Yeah, well, it cost about six of the genuine article," I tell him dryly. Elena's hand is starting to wander higher on my thigh. I wonder if I should remind her we're in public. I settle for shifting a little to hide my lap from the rest of the room.

"I love that it turned into a clown suit," Elena says, giggling into her second bourbon.

"I really wanted it to have those little pompoms down the front," I tell her. "But we couldn't figure out how to disguise the lumps."

"Have you been praying for snow every day since Christmas?" Kyle asks, grinning appreciatively. "It's been too warm of a winter this year. Tough when you have a water-soluble jacket to dissolve."

"The weather was looking too shiny," I agree. "So I compelled the groundskeeper in the city park to turn the sprinklers back on for a day…right in the middle of the picnic Stefan conned me into helping put together. That'll teach him to try to get me to do his dirty work for him."

"He really should know better," the bartender agrees. "I'd never trust you for a second."

"Yeah, well apparently he doesn't," I tell him, my mood souring slightly at the reminder.

Elena squeezes my leg, her brown eyes sympathetic. "It was a good trick," she offers hopefully.

I smile at her so she'll stop giving me those big sad eyes. "Damn right."

"It's a good thing you don't have to eat," Kyle declares. "I wouldn't trust that blonde not to poison your dinner for this one. She wore that jacket for two months before I saw her give it a rest for a day."

I shrug. "Well worth the price of admission, my friend."

I tilt my head and give my girlfriend a lazy once over, enjoying the affectionate stroking of her fingers against the denim of my jeans. "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

Kyle snorts and snaps me sharply with a bar towel.

"Looking for a ride home," Elena purrs, peeking up at me through her eyelashes with a mischievous smile. "What are my chances?"

"Incredibly good," I tell her with my most charming smile. I stand up and take Ric's glass, tilting it toward his empty chair in salute before I shoot it.

"You kids try to keep from killing each other in that great big house of yours, you hear?" Kyle warns.

"Yessir," Elena says with giggle and a pitiful excuse for a salute.

I sling an arm around her shoulders and steer her toward the door, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. She's not Ric, but she's not half-bad barstool company.

Elena's sober again by the time we get home, but she pretends like she's not, growling kisses into my neck and pinching my butt like she's two bottles into my favorite kind of giggly. I play along like a champ, scooping her up to carry her up the stairs as if she might trip. The fact that it positions her just right to remind her to nibble on my earlobe is a totally unintentional bonus.

Riiiight.

I pause when I see the wooden stake lying prominently in the middle of our bed. Elena looks up and goes stiff before she wriggles out of my arms.

"Is she threatening you? After I warned her?" she hisses furiously.

I catch her around the waist as she goes stomping off toward the other wing of the house.

"It's okay. It's not from Caroline," I tell her. "It's from Stefan."

"Stefan?" she asks, frowning.

I tip her chin up and give her a slow kiss designed to distract. "Don't worry about it. Run us a bath?"

She grins. "Uh-huh."

She strips off her shirt as she heads for the bathroom, and I watch her go, her hips swinging a little extra because she knows I'm looking.

Once she's out of sight, I pick the stake up and flip it once in the air before I stow it safely in the bedside table.

Now that's an apology I can live with.

* * *

_Author's Note: Hello, dear readers! I'm out on the road again, indefinitely, so my internet capability is going to be a little spotty in the future. I'll update when I can, but don't be offended if it takes me a little longer to respond to reviews and PM's. I still love and appreciate all of you, I promise, and I'll be building WiFi routers out of coat hangers, no doubt, just so I can check my reviews a little more often ;) Thanks so much for all your support and enthusiasm for this story- you guys are amazing!_


	6. Tomorrow's Rose

_Author's Note: For those of you who read this chapter as a one-shot of the same name, you may still want to have a quick re-read, because the next chapter continues these scenes right where they left off, and you don't want to miss anything! Cyber roses and lillies and orchids to everyone who has been reading and reviewing this story- you guys are the greatest!_

_For latbfan, who needed something cheery after 4x15, and who wanted to know the story behind Stefan's tattoo. If you're itching to know what happened after the cameras went off on 4x15, "Stand By Me," check out her beautifully heart-wrenching version in chapters 17-21 of her interconnected one-shot fic, "Bourbon for Breakfast."_

_Disclaimer: I do not own the Vampire Diaries, their characters, or their universe. This fic is rated T for sexual references and adult language._

* * *

**Tomorrow's Rose**

**CAROLINE POV**

Is it wrong to ogle a boy's butt when he's drinking the blood of woodland creatures?

I mean, a fine-looking behind knows no occasion, right? But I still feel like a little bit of a pervert, so I clasp my hands behind my back and study the play of light through the leaves. It's nice, all green and gold and nature-y. But it's got nothing on Stefan's ass.

My fiancee covers the body of the rabbit with leaves and wipes his mouth before turning back to me, but I still see the grimace on his lips and I wince in sympathy. Animal blood is nastier than fat-free salad dressing.

"The light colored rabbits taste better," he admits. "Something about the breed."

"Racist," I tease.

He takes a threatening step toward me. "Take that back."

I dance back out of his grasp, grinning. "Uh-uh. _One _of us was a slave owner here and I'm not thinking it was me…"

He growls and lunges and I dodge around a tree and flit away into the woods, grinning to feel the wind lifting my hair. An arm snakes around my waist and he whirls me back against a tree. The speed of the run drew night-colored veins around my eyes, sharpening the whole world around me so the rough bark scraping my back feels as good as the pressure of his chest against my nipples.

He takes my mouth in a kiss so fierce that it presses my head back against the tree, the bark catching in my hair as his tongue rasps against mine. The muscles between my legs clench in eager response.

I vaguely realize that if I don't call a time-out soon, I'll be teaching a little hot yoga in the forest before my afternoon Starbucks date with Elena.

Stefan pulls back, his green eyes glittering with focus and I nearly forget all the reasons why I don't want to have gymnastic sex in public right now. But no way, I don't have time before I have to be back to town and I sure don't have enough time to re-curl my hair.

"Eww, you taste like an animal," I complain, wrinkling my nose playfully.

My voice is a little too breathy to be convincing, but Stefan looks chagrined anyway, pulling back a little as if he's afraid his breath smells bad.

"Sorry. You know you don't have to come hunting with me. There's no reason for you to put up with eating animals when you do so well on blood bags."

"I had to watch football with my ex," I remind him. "This is much better, I promise. Besides, you're supposed to make sacrifices for the ones you love and you do _so _much better with animal blood to supplement the blood bags."

"Sacrifices, huh?" his lips quirk up into a smile. "Is that how I ended up losing all my Friday nights to watching America's Next Top Model?"

"It only counts as a sacrifice if you don't like it," I remind him.

He can name his favorite contestant from every episode for the last two seasons, and I don't think it has anything to do with his perfect vampire memory. His favorites are never the winners, of course. My man has a thing for the underdog.

"My point exactly. That's why I think you should be trading me sexual favors for watching with you," he says, his fingers tracing a deliberate path up the back of my thigh and creeping under the hem of my skirt.

"What kind of girl do you think I am, trading my body to get what I want?" I ask indignantly, catching his hand before it can get any closer into the danger zone.

He drops his voice until it is that rumbly murmur that makes my nipples draw taut against the suddenly irritating lace of my bra. "You traded your body to me for wartime secrets."

I blush and press my legs together. There's no way I'm going to make it to my girl time coffee date if he uses that voice.

"That was different," I hiss. "That was role play."

And once I saw Stefan in his old WWII uniform, I would have sold him any secret in the world. I can still remember the way the coarse wool felt against my inner thighs when he bent me over the desk and kneed my legs apart.

His hand sneaks up my skirt again and this time I don't really want to stop him.

"This can be role play," he offers. "I can be the football player, copping a feel off a cheerleader."

I laugh, my head falling back against the tree as his breath caresses my throat. "That sounds super skeezy."

He sighs and tightens his arm around my waist, tipping us over backward. I squeal as we fall, Stefan landing flat on his back with me on his chest. He grins, unfazed, and catches my earlobe between his teeth.

"You could be an evil succubus, taking advantage of my body."

I roll us so I'm beneath him again. "You're the ex-slaveowner. Maybe I'm an escaped slave and you're my master," I suggest, widening my eyes so I look young and vulnerable.

He chuckles dryly. "Trust me, that one's not as fun when you've been around for the real version."

I wince, abashed. "Sorry."

"Don't be," he reassures me with a soft kiss. "Besides, I'd much rather you grew up now rather than then. It's safer." He pulls my shirt off and tosses it into the trees, his eyes gleaming when he sees the pink and lavender lace of my bra. "Better lingerie now, too."

He reaches behind his head with one hand and grasps the back of his hoodie, but when he tries to pull it off it binds up around his face, blinding him. He tugs harder, unbalancing himself and he tips off of me, the hoodie wrapped completely around his head.

I reach to help, but I'm laughing too hard to do anything but get in the way. I hear material tearing as he finally gets it off, tossing it down and glaring at it.

"Stupid shirt, I was trying to be smooth!" he tells it accusingly.

I shriek with laughter, rolling away from him to clutch my stomach.

He pounces on me and gives me a narrow-eyed look. "Are you laughing at me?"

"You are the world's biggest nerd," I giggle, wiping at my watering eyes with the heel of one hand. "Did I just smear my eyeliner?"

Stefan perks up. "We could play nerd and cheerleader?"

I laugh. "Too close to reality to be fun."

He purses his lips. "Ha ha. Very funny."

I grin, because he's adorable when he's trying to pretend to be mad.

"Look up," he tells me, and I do. He runs a gentle thumb under my eye, then touches the corner of my eye with a knuckle, getting the last traces of smeared eyeliner. "Perfect," he proclaims softly.

I wrap my arms around his neck. "Being charming doesn't make you less of a nerd."

"Being beautiful doesn't make you less mean," he accuses, widening his eyes in the same trick I just used on him.

"I'll show you mean," I threaten, rolling us so he's beneath me and pinning his hands over his head. Hard, so he knows I mean it.

His eyes flare with heat, and I feel him harden through the denim of his jeans. I rock my hips a little bit, enjoying the fact that I decided to wear a skirt today.

"Come down here and do that," he invites huskily, his eyes tracing the curve of my lips with obvious approval.

And I do.

* * *

**DAMON POV**

* * *

I'm reading in the upstairs study when I hear the front door slam.

I've taken to avoiding the living room when I want to read ever since Caroline moved in. She always asks me about my day, and then I have to listen to her talk about what color ribbons she's going to put on Stefan's dick after the wedding, or where the best place to buy organically dyed blue birdseed is. Because of course she doesn't want the little birdies to _die_ but regular birdseed is so ugly and it just looks like trash and it ruins her whole design scheme and yeah. No.

Welcome to my life. Its loud and fucking color-coordinated and I'm pretty sure the noise pollution alone is going to make me grow ovaries.

I listen for a second to figure out who just came home. I hear Elena try to stifle a giggle and then soft footsteps that mean she's tiptoeing, but not actually paying enough attention to be really quiet. Which means she's looking for me and she's in a playful mood. I smirk and mark my place in my book with a dark bit of lace, going to stand to the left of the doorway.

I stop breathing and wait. She checks the kitchen and living room, then our room. I hear the crinkling of paper for a moment in our room, which is suspicious. Now she's tiptoeing really fast, like she does when she's trying not to laugh and I grin, listening to her approach. I wonder what she's about to spring on me. It must be something good if she's going to this much trouble.

She comes through the door and looks to the right. I'm on her in an instant, pinning her arms to her sides and biting her neck with blunt human teeth and a fierce growl.

She shrieks loudly and tries to elbow me in the stomach. "Oh my God, Damon, what are you _doing_?"

I nibble on her neck. "Um, biting you?"

She makes a sound halfway between a hum and a purr and relaxes. "Carry on."

I bite her gently, and then trace the marks with my tongue. She makes a low sound in her throat and my dick thickens eagerly in response because I can tell she's in the mood for something a little sharper.

"Give you a real bite if you tell me what's in the bag," I bargain.

She's carrying a silver gift bag stuffed with yellow tissue paper that I recognize from the stack of gift-wrapping supplies she keeps in our closet.

Apparently this is a thing. A thing chicks do. They keep gift wrapping supplies on hand all year in case they need to wrap gifts at a moment's notice, presumably under enemy fire.

She beams. "A present for you."

I press a kiss into her cheek, because she's adorable when she's happy. Though who am I kidding? My girl would be adorable six days into an eight-day flu wearing a hot dog costume with the Sorting Hat.

I peer over her shoulder at the gift bag.

"What kind of present?"

It's not my birthday, or our anniversary. I think for a minute and decide it is also not the anniversary of the first time we met, kissed, or slept together. It could be the anniversary that someone died, but I can't figure why Elena would give me a present for that. We had ridiculously fantastic sex this morning, so maybe that earned me a gift?

She giggles and flushes guiltily. "An I'm-mad-at-Caroline-and-Stefan-for-what-they-did-t o-you present?"

I raise an eyebrow. Caroline went after me last week over one of my better pranks. It would have been just another day at the races, but when she tried to kick my ass this time, she was armed and Elena was having none of it. And of course then Stefan got mad because the girls were fighting and what could have been a fantastic catfight degenerated into a lecture from the Fun Police.

It's a vaguely irritating memory, but I'm growing more fond of it now that it has somehow resulted in Elena buying me presents and laughing and tiptoeing around like a mischievous burglar. And honestly, when she looks at me like this it makes it hard to think about anything but how to make her eyes sparkle all over again.

"Stop smiling at me and open your present!" she groans.

"Okay," I tell her agreeably.

I drop onto the couch, pulling her onto my lap and starting to carefully undo the tiny buttons on her plum-colored Henley.

"Wrong present, Damon," she says dryly. "But good try."

"Hey, all my present-identification experience says that the gift is the one with the bow on top."

Elena's brown eyes drop to her outfit, then to the gift bag. "Think we're fresh out of bows here. You might need an updated method."

I smile wickedly and slide a finger under the button of her jeans. She gasps and grabs my wrist, but I don't miss the way she leans subtly backward to make more room for my hand.

I tap my index finger against the tiny bow at the top of her panties and give my eyebrows a bounce.

She glares at me, but I can see the corners of her mouth twitching as she tries to hold back a smile.

"How did you know my underwear had a bow on it?" she challenges.

"The only ones that don't are the red ones, and you wore those yesterday," I say easily, tracing the lace that guards the edge of her panties. Her grip on my wrist loosens.

"If you don't stop that, you're going to ruin your surprise," she protests, her eyes lingering on my lips as if she's wondering how I'll taste.

I lean in and kiss her slow and soft, stroking her belly with my single rogue finger. When I pull back, her eyes are dilated and she's forgotten to breathe.

I smile. "I hate to ruin surprises."

Actually, I'd be content to spend another half an hour enjoying Elena's smile before I unwrap her because I know what's under that Henley trumps any surprise on earth. But she seemed so pleased with what was in the bag that maybe I can do that and then continue on down the to-do list. Win win.

I transfer her to the seat next to me on the couch and open the bag.

Inside there is a neatly folded stack of clothes. At a glance, they don't seem like my normal colors.

Shit. When Stefan and Caroline got together, she got him to switch from gel to mousse (huge improvement, even I'll admit) and wear nicer jeans, though she hasn't made a dent in his hoodie habit. I guess it was only a matter of time before Elena embarked on a Damon makeover. The hell of it is, as much as I love her, I have better taste than Elena does.

I pick up the first article of clothing, trying to figure out a way to not wear any of these without disappointing her. Then I notice with a surge of relief that the shirt is ripped. Not a present then. Something else. I play along, though, just out of sheer curiosity.

"A hoodie?" I scoff. "Elena, I know you're not into fashion, but really? Why would I wear a garment with a flap of fabric that I do not intend to use?"

"You wouldn't?" she blinks at me. "Really?"

Ladies and gentleman, the worst poker face in the state of Virginia. Every muscle in her face is taut, trying to hold back her smile.

I pull a pink and purple bra out of the stack and dangle it by the strap. "Aww, you shouldn't have."

She giggles, her face-cracking grin back in place. "Wanna know where I got them?"

"You mugged a teenybopper on her way to have malts with her boyfriend at the Grill?"

She looks puzzled. "What's a malt? Like malt liquor?"

I sigh heavily. "See, this is what they never tell you about having a mid-life crisis. Your hot younger girlfriend will never get your jokes about Trapper Keepers, pedal cars and the tubes in the TV."

"Tubes?" she's fully distracted now. "There are tubes in the TV and they're called Trapper Keepers?"

"It's a good thing you're cute," I tell her, "because your historical knowledge of cultural references is abysmal."

"Damon!" she says, actually bouncing a little in her frustration, which is both cuter and more distracting than outdated pop culture references. "Don't you want to know where I got the clothes?"

"I assumed that a young transvestite saw you, declared his love on the spot and when he was denied, disrobed to prove his sincerity."

She lifts an eyebrow.

"No?" I shrug. "Well, it was worth a try."

"Sooooo," she says, drawing it out. "Caroline and Stefan went hunting in the woods and I was going to follow them and try to prank them somehow-," she begins.

I try to hold back a smile. Elena is not, shall we say, a masterful pranker and it's too fucking good that she just wandered out in the woods without a plan hoping she'd think of something. I'd tease her, but she wants to get back at Caroline and Stefan, and if my girl wants to stand up for me? I'm not going to argue. I wouldn't mind if there was Jell-O wrestling involved, but it's not an absolute requirement.

"And then they started to have sex," she reports, her lip curling a little.

I wince. "You should have seen that coming. Do you want me to get you an appointment with a good therapist?"

"No, listen," she tells me. "I was really really quiet, and I remembered all the tricks you showed me." She reclines dramatically on the couch next to me and pretends to examine her nails, but her eyes are shining. "And I maybe stole all their clothes."

"You did?" I drawl admiringly. "Well, you naughty little thing."

I give her a wink and sift through the pile with renewed interest. "Everything but the socks and shoes. I'll be damned.

I tug her back into my lap and wrap my arms around her slender waist. "Do you know why I love you?"

"Because I'm the only other person on earth you trust to clean your precious shower?"

"Close," I tell her, sliding her phone out of her back pocket to check the time. I push it back into her pocket nice and slow, watching her cheeks flush pink and her breathing catch as my fingers caress her bottom through her jeans.

"Mostly it's because I'm having a Council meeting here in less than ten minutes," I tell her. "Which means that when Stefan and Caroline come storming back in _sans vetements, _and furious with me because they'll never suspect you, they can do it with the full complement of witnesses. Including the mayor."

"And the sheriff," Elena finishes in a horrified whisper, her hand covering her mouth and eyes wide. "Oops."

I tug her hand away from her mouth and kiss her fingers, not bothering to hide my proud smile. "You, Elena Gilbert, give the best presents _ever."_

* * *

**CAROLINE POV**

* * *

I do a lot of things to look beautiful: I wax, shave, pluck, exfoliate, moisturize, buff, smooth, polish, powder, outline, highlight and curl, all in the course of the average lazy Sunday. I know how to pick exactly the right cut of any outfit for any body type, and I can accessorize shoes that could make a burkha shine like a Caroline Herrera.

Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely a feminist. I organized the Maids of Mystic Falls Campaign to bring awareness to the continued gender inequality of household chores, and we got 35 guys to fill out our survey about what household chores were their responsibility and pledge to take on a larger share in the future. Which was about 35 more guys than wanted to fill out our survey, so I consider it a 350% success.

And it's not like I think that being a woman is all about looking good. Every self help book I've ever read- and I've read plenty, though you'd better believe I keep them where Damon will _never_ find them- agrees that confidence is the key to success and I feel most confident when I know I look smokin' hot.

But some days, I'm not sure why I bother. Because Stefan can make me feel more beautiful with a single touch than I would after a dozen makeovers.

I'm draped across his chest, smudged with dirt and crushed leaves, and his fingers trace my spine like I'm the only thing he ever wants to touch.

I wish I knew how he did that, so I could do it back to him.

I relax under his touch and sigh, idly tracing the lines of the rose tattoo that sits on the high, firm muscle of his shoulder.

"You know every time you do that, I wish I would have tattooed a labyrinth across my whole body."

I snort. "Like I wanted to date a tatted up biker guy."

"Mmm." He smooths my hair away from my face. "I would have covered up, then, until I convinced you to go out with me."

"What fun would that be?" I tease.

Stefan really does have the most breathtaking body. I'm a great appreciator of male beauty: anything from the Zac Efron cute boy look to the rugged masculinity of Hugh Jackman. Stefan's the perfect blend of all of them; hitting just the right balance of bulky and sleek muscle, he makes me wish sometimes that I could draw just so I could really appreciate every line of him.

Or I guess I could just put him on a bearskin rug and get out my iPhone. I smile against his neck. My phone has a zoom function that would do a pretty good job of appreciating his male beauty, and it would really dress up his incoming calls, too.

Though if Damon got his hands on it, that could be bad. Last time I left my phone laying around the house, Stefan's ringtone got changed to "I Feel Like a Natural Woman," which wasn't nearly as alarming as going to answer it and finding a picture of a penis staring back at me. Not, I might add, Stefan's penis.

Way over the line.

Of course, it _is_ Damon. He's not aware that there is a line.

"What are you thinking about?" Stefan asks.

Your brother's penis, and his personality disorder.

"Just wondering when you got your tattoo," I tell him instead.

"Really?" he asks skeptically and I fight back a wince.

I don't know what glitch in my genetic makeup makes my voice go up an octave every time I try to lie, but I could live without the auditory version of Pinocchio's nose, thank you very much.

"I've always wondered about it," I tell him truthfully. "You don't really seem like the tattoo type, and if you got anything, I'd think it would be some kind of life motto or something. Or a picture to remind you of someone."

Lexi, maybe. She's only been gone a year and to Stefan, that must feel like no time at all.

"It is to remind me," he says, his fingers gently untangling my hair, picking bits of leaves from the strands and putting them aside.

"Of what?" I ask, and then realize that's really rude. "Sorry. I guess it's not really my business, you know, unless you feel like telling me."

He's quiet for a long moment and I wonder if it's about a woman or something. I mean, we all know Damon was celibate for fifty years and then slept his way up and down every coast that abuts the ocean, but other than Rebekah, I don't know if Stefan was with anyone in the space between the Katherine and the Elena years.

He said once that he didn't have time for much of a life in between trying to control his cravings for blood but yeah, I'm sorry. Since I'm a vampire, I could squeeze being horny into the space between two seconds.

"I don't know if I can make it make sense to you," he says finally, his hands gone still on my back. "But it's a simple enough story. You know I was in the second World War, as an ambulance driver."

I nod against his chest. I know it was during one of his long struggles to stay on animal blood and I've always thought it was really dumb of Lexi to send him to be around so many wounded humans at a time like that.

"I was stationed in North Africa, but when I shipped back home, we were stuck for weeks in London before the weather allowed us to sail for home. I had-," he pauses. "War is-," he stops again, looking at me like there are too many words caught behind his teeth to let them all out at once.

"Bad," he finally says, stroking my hair. The birds have gotten used to our presence and there's one with a very distinctive three-note song. I listen to it over and over again in the silence.

"Damon was supposed to be there with me. He said he was coming and then he just never showed up. It would have been so much easier with him there, knowing that someone could hold me back if I needed them to. And because he knew about war, knew what I was getting into and he didn't-," he cuts himself off, his fingers twitching once against the back of my neck before he continues in a quieter voice.

"The smell of blood saturated the whole world. Every uniform and car and gun had traces of it; I could smell it waking or sleeping. I worked as many hours a day as I could without raising suspicion because I was afraid if I let go of the steering wheel, I'd find a soldier under my hands instead and I'd never be able to go home."

I squeeze him tightly, hiding my glare against his chest. Stupid Lexi. There are easier ways of getting used to the smell of blood. She's lucky he didn't go on a binge that never ended. I'd never have met him and he'd still be in Egypt, picking off oil pipeline workers. He'd be the freaking Ripper of Exxon Mobile.

"That's ridiculous," I burst out, pulling back so I can look at him. "It was war and all crazy and you shouldn't have even been there in the first place! I mean, when I transitioned you didn't take me to freaking Afghanistan," I remind him.

"No, Lexi was right, Care. Penance is supposed to be difficult." He pauses, toying with my hair. "Anyway, that's not the point. It got easier, or I got used to it being hard. And then one day it was just over. They put me on a train and then a ship and then we were in England waiting for our next ship.

"We were all stationed at a big estate, sleeping on the floor of the ballroom with blankets nailed over the windows. And it wasn't until I was there, sleeping in a big room full of human heartbeats, that I realized I was free. For the first time since 1864, I could resist the blood. I could have a life if I wanted to: friends, a home."

I nuzzle my face into his neck to combat the sharp pang that goes through my chest. My mom's never around, but I've never been on my own. Certainly not for nearly a century. I try to picture myself in some big English mansion like in Pride and Prejudice, on my way back from war to make a fresh start, but the image is fuzzy in my mind. I can't imagine being so alone.

"Before I left, Lexi insisted that I make peace with Damon. I know he has his moments so it's hard to understand, but it was-," his muscles tighten against my belly and then relax as he shifts his legs. "It was important to me. But I never heard from him during the entire time I was overseas and I knew that whatever life I built, he wasn't going to be a part of it."

Stupid Damon. I can't believe he bailed on a whole war. He probably decided it wouldn't be that fun and went dancing instead, the jerk. I make a mental note to light into him when I get home.

I've been meaning to come up with a prank for his bathtub, anyway. I've been on these art department websites for movies sets and stuff and they have this kind of weird Styrofoam that looks like ceramic but comes apart in water and if I could figure out how to take his bathtub out, I could replace it with the Styrofoam stuff and wait for the next time he runs a bath and goes all mental because his freaking tub dissolved.

But somehow a disappearing tub doesn't seem like enough revenge for missing a war. And to be honest, I don't get it. Even when he was Damon, Super Dickhead, he still looked out for his brother. I don't believe that he just wouldn't show up when Stefan needed him.

"Do you want to hear something strange?"

"Hmm?" I encourage, glad to get him off a sad topic. He still hasn't explained the tattoo but if has to do with war and stuff, maybe I don't really want to know.

"I thought I saw him, sometimes. When I was driving the ambulance. I worked at night, and the bombing made for weird light, so I could never be sure." Stefan clears his throat.

"Anyway, that's not the story. When I got the tattoo, I was stuck waiting to go home but I didn't truly have a home to go to. Nearly everything I'd ever wanted was within my grasp. But I didn't feel anything. Anything at all."

"I didn't want to speak to anyone, so I spent most of my time walking the gardens over and over again in the rain and the wind and the sleet. Until one day I was sitting there in the rose garden, soaked to the skin, and I just started to laugh. Because of that old saying, you know? Stop and smell the roses," Stefan says with one breath of a chuckle that dies before it even starts.

"I got up and I looked at them and before I even thought about what I was doing, I was ripping them out by the roots, destroying them. I tore out dozens of bushes, red and pink and yellow, and when I was sitting in the middle of the whole mess, I was still laughing. Because I _could _smell them. I could smell my blood from where the thorns had torn my skin and underneath that I could smell the flowers."

I tilt my head so I can see his face, my lips tightening with concern, but he's staring up at the trees above us. I wish I would have known it was this kind of story. The sad kind. I would have asked at a different time, or maybe not at all.

"The woods near there had plenty of game and I finally had the time to hunt properly so that I was well-fed and I could smell everything and I could _see_ them, so much more even than whatever human wrote that line to begin with.

"I could see the grain of the petals, the way they're soft but not really smooth, the edges rounded but irregular. I could smell not just the petals and not just the pollen but the chlorophyll of the stems. The water inside the cells."

He shrugs, his shoulders pushing against my chest. "And I didn't care. They were beautiful. I could see that, even then, and I marveled that a world that could tear itself apart with bombs and guns and blades could ever host such a delicate little thing. That it could ever live here. But it didn't make _me_ want to live."

"So why did you get the tattoo?" I ask him, curious again despite myself. "If it didn't help?"

Stefan tips his face down to me and I can see the shadows in his eyes and the faint quirk of his lips as he says, "Because I still wanted it to. And I thought with everything I'd seen and been and felt, that if I could still _want_ it to make a difference to me, then maybe-," he pauses for long enough that I can hear that same bird trill its little three-note song. "Then maybe that would be enough. So I walked straight from there to the tattoo parlor, and I made them draw a rose on me, because I thought if I took nothing else with me all the days of my life, I should take hope."

I know I should say something, but I have to swallow to loosen my throat. Because that would be a great story, except that I know it took place in 1945. Which means he didn't find a life and a family. He came back and he stayed away from people until all the practice from the war was lost and he was sensitive to the smell of blood all over again. He didn't go after what he wanted. Instead, he lived alone for over sixty years before he finally found the courage to go home again. Somehow, that's the saddest part of the whole story, worse than the war or Damon's betrayal.

I can't imagine waiting sixty years for anything. I couldn't even wait for the Twilight books to come out in paperback. And I can't help but think it's funny that when he came back to Mystic Falls, it was the exact moment Damon chose to come back, too.

Stefan kisses the top of my head as if he can sense my melancholy thoughts. "It did help," he reassures me. "Some days more than others. But all the days were worth it, I think, in the end." I can hear the smile creep back into his voice. "Anyway, it's better than a flaming skull, right?"

"It is pretty," I agree, remembering my theory about the tattoo. "I had thought maybe you got it because of your mother's roses."

"My mother's roses?"

"Her garden," I prompt.

"We didn't have a rose garden," he corrects me. "We had the maze, and a formal garden, but it didn't have roses."

I roll off his chest, propping myself up on an elbow and frowning at him. "Damon said you did. Why would he lie about roses, of all things?"

"Since when do you and Damon talk about flowers together?" Stefan says with a skeptical lift to his eyebrows.

"Since I was saying the driveway would look beautiful lined with rose hedges and he was saying that it was too much work and he wasn't going to hire a gardener to take care of glorified parking bumpers because he knew I wouldn't keep up with it and I was saying like he even knew how much work it was because he'd never gardened a day in his life and he said that his mother did." I pause at the look on Stefan's face, but he nods for me to continue.

"He said it was her hobby, that she spent hours every day pruning and fertilizing and testing different imported soils and hybridizing her own varietals. He said she loved it," I smile. "He said nobody would be stupid enough to do all that crap unless they loved it."

"I didn't know that," Stefan whispers, glancing away. "I was so young, and my father…he must have torn out the roses after she died. He never would have wasted the money on a new slave to keep it all going unless he thought it would gain him some social standing. He only kept the maze up because he was so proud that it was the only one in the county."

I lay my head back on his shoulder, my hand over the ink-darkened skin.

"I wish-," he says, and then hesitates. "I wish I would have known that."

"Maybe you did," I tell him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder, to his symbol of what is worth living for. And mine, beneath it.

I sit up and the torn up ground of the clearing catches my eye. I can't hold back a smile at the mess we made.

"What?" Stefan asks.

"I think I like hunting."

"Trust me," Stefan says, propping his head up and watching me without bothering to get up. "It's a lot more fun with you around. You have strange taste in ah, post-hunting conversation, though."

"I didn't know it was a war tattoo," I protest. "I thought those were all naked girls or Don't Stomp On Me or whatever."

His lips twitch. "Something like that."

"Are you laughing at me?"

"I wouldn't dare," he promises solemnly, his eyes gleaming.

"You better not. I've got my eye on you, Stefan Salvatore," I warn, hands on hips, a gesture that probably loses some of it's threatening punch since I'm wearing nothing but a single stray sock. Still, Stefan knows better than to risk my wrath, single-socked status aside.

"And _what _did you do with our clothes?" I demand. "You always throw them way too far. I swear, if I had a nickel for every time I've asked where my panties were, I could fund the whole Ronald McDonald House for a year."

Stefan chuckles. "Did you look in the trees?"

"Very funny," I tell him, expanding my search area. After five minutes, all I've found is three of our four shoes and I'm starting to get suspicious. I glance over at Stefan, who is frowning at the ground on the other side of the clearing.

"You don't think-," I ask him, trailing off, and then my eyes snap to his as we both realize exactly what happened to our clothes.

"Damon!"

**_To Be Continued..._**

* * *

_Author's Note: __If you'd like to see how Stefan and Caroline got together, check out my full length Season 4 rewrite, "Desperate Love." __A whole different version of Season 4! One overarching plotline with many mini climaxes along the way and an explosive, game-changing finale. A meditation on the nature of love, free will and morality in an imperfect world, through: suspense, romance, steam, angst, and friendship. Tons of Delena as well as Stefan/Caroline/Klaus, The whole Mystic Falls family with Jeremy and Ric, too, plus original characters. No sire bond, no Silas, and very little Professor Shane._

_Thanks to arabean for another gorgeous story cover shot icon._


	7. Truth Written In Lies

_Author's Note: This picks up right where Tomorrow's Rose left off. Remember, this is a Desperate Love sequel, and in that universe, the "We'll Always Have Bourbon Street" episode didn't exist so Stefan and Damon never talked about 1942._

* * *

**Truth Written In Lies**

**Stefan POV**

When I went out hunting this morning I expected to spend a quick half hour blunting the ache that lives inside my fangs, returning with a bitter savory taste on my tongue that I'd hurry to scrub off with cinnamon-flavored toothpaste. I did not expect to come back without my girlfriend, or my pants, but that's the kind of thing that happens when my brother gets involved in my affairs.

I can't resist a glance back toward the woods as I leave her to replace the clothes my brother stole. I can just see a hint of shining golden hair, one scrap of smooth pale skin showing through the branches of the bushes.

The tattoo sits easier on my shoulder now that she knows its story. I never realized before how odd it was, that no one knew but me what was written in my skin. If I died before telling her, it would have gone like a hieroglyph into my grave. Un-translated, as storyless as my bones.

I turn and walk toward the back door of the boarding house. I don't bother with speed, because I'm sure that whatever I do, Damon will be waiting so he can enjoy his own wit while he gloats over his juvenile little victory. Honestly, after 170 years, you'd think my big brother would grow up. I just want to retrieve our clothes as quickly as I can so that Caroline's not left crouched in the bushes like a criminal. She's not happy with Damon as it is and now she'll be distracted the whole rest of the day with plotting whatever new prank she wants to pull on him.

At first I was proud of her ingenuity, but I can't help but worry. For her the pranks are just good fun, but Damon gets bored easily. And most of the time when he gets bored, he does something impulsive. The last thing I want is for a prank to get his temper up at the wrong moment.

I think he was bored when he agreed to go to war with me.

_Think they could use another driver? _

I shouldn't have said anything to Caroline and I'll have to remember to ask her not to bring it up to him. It wasn't fair of me. He never really meant it, anyway. He was just joking, teasing like he used to when we were kids. He'd clout me on the back and laugh, saying that I wouldn't recognize a joke if it bit me on the tip of my nose.

We laughed a lot that night, high on sharing our first drinks together in thirty years. It's not like we talked seriously about the war, or our plans. It was just a little comment in passing and then I had to leave in a hurry when Charlotte came with her "leftovers."

He didn't get a chance to tell me he was joking. I'm sure he would have laughed himself into stitches if he'd known I was actually waiting for him at the train station. I was still watching for as the train pulled out, the platform fading into the distance, filled with crying wives and children waving at other men.

I'm sure Damon never mentioned it again because it wasn't a promise broken at all. It was just me, never learning how to take a joke because I'm too slow, too serious. Which are no doubt the same things he's going to accuse me of when I come in the back door to find that he's conveniently waiting in the kitchen, lounging against the doorway with a whiskey, a poorly faked look of surprise and some snappy little quip already on his lips.

Damon can tease and feel superior all he wants. My sense of humor is fine; Caroline and I laugh all the time. Just because I don't like to laugh at other people's expense doesn't mean that I'm not funny.

But still, I don't want him to know that I didn't get the joke in 1942. I deliberately never mentioned it in my letters. Not that he read them since I didn't have an address to send them to, but he wrote me letters when he went to war, so I did the same.

There was something about putting a pen to paper in an army tent filled with the snores of strangers that made me feel more adult than anything ever had. Like maybe in learning not to be a monster, I'd found how to be a man as well.

I wrote brave letters to my brother, and I didn't mention the blood. How much of it there was. How much I wanted it, even from those who would never miss it again. How I wanted to lick it when it had dried, feel it congeal on my tongue or flow hot and fresh into my stomach until it glowed under my skin.

I didn't care how or who or where, or why not. But somehow I didn't touch a drop of it to my tongue and so I felt like a man when I wrote about all the things I should have been thinking about when I was actually thinking about blood.

My words traced through my stationary like a mirror of the confident script flowing across cheap, thin paper; on pages that live now tucked away in one of my old books, the postmarks still intact on the envelopes that carried them from my brother to me.

He wrote of the girls who spread quilts and billowing skirts on the grass. How colorful they looked on the hills above the battleground with their baskets of picnic lunch. How he'd snuck away once and risked court martial because he knew he could flirt peaches and some fresh bread out of the debutantes before the drums called the men into formation.

I tried to write about girls, too, but there were only the exhausted nurses, once so crisp and smart and full of professional optimism. Their untended hair was scraggling out from underneath their crooked caps and their dark, puffy eyes never met yours, only registered and dismissed you for your lack of wounds. There were no towns where I was stationed, only tents and the kind of sun you need two daylight rings for.

I always wished there had been girls to write to Damon about.

I stop to listen at the back door, because Damon may think it would be funny for me to walk in naked in front of Elena, but I wouldn't. And neither, I suspect, would Caroline.

There are more voices than there should be, and I have to focus to identify them because they're all the way in the living room. Women's voices, but not young and teasing…Carol Lockwood. That's the mayor's voice.

I press my lips together in annoyance. He's hosting a damned council meeting and not only did he not tell me, but he took a morning stroll to steal my underwear and run them up the figurative flagpole for the entire community to enjoy. Fortunately, he's arrogant enough to think that because only half my diet is human these days, I wouldn't have heard the voices before I came inside.

Not that I care what they see. I've worn this body long enough that I can't work up much of an interest in who has or hasn't seen it, but the reason behind the nudity will start talk. Talk that will certainly involve Caroline, that will undoubtedly upset her.

So instead of trying to sneak to my room, which I'm sure Damon would never allow, I duck below the windows, moving in an undignified crouch until I'm out of sight. Once I'm close enough, I leap as quietly as I can manage up to my balcony.

The brass doorknob won't turn. I glare at it and jiggle it a little, giving up my pretense at silence. It's locked.

I never lock my door.

There's no point; anyone that wanted to get inside my room would be strong enough to break it and it's an antique, contemporaneous with the first construction of the boarding house. My room is in the original structure and Damon's wing was added on twenty years later, so the fixtures in my side are the oldest in the building. I might be able to get a replacement from a specialty dealer but if I did, it wouldn't share the history of the house, only its façade.

I drop back to the ground, glowering at the lawn beneath my bare toes as I scuttle underneath the windows again. I hope Caroline isn't watching this. I jump onto Damon's balcony and his knob turns easily under my hand. I smile.

_Take that, brother. Didn't think I'd try your room, did you?_

My eyes narrow and I give the door a shove, letting it swing open and waiting for any sign of a trap. Nothing. I step inside and close the door. It swings smoothly, silently and I frown, noting that Damon has traded out the original hinges.

I pause to listen. The voices are louder than they should be. I need to hurry, since I have no interest in finding out what asinine stunt he intends to pull in front of the council.

"We have several prints here from the idealistically morbid Dale Gallon," Damon says. The practiced charm in his voice completely fails to disguise his disdain for that particular artist or the delight underlying it that has nothing to do with art and everything to do with the fact that he knows where I am and is probably leading this faux-intellectual walking tour on a beeline straight for me.

Footsteps on the stairs accompany his running commentary. "We have a few early example of Impressionists here. Unimpressive, mostly, though it's nice that they finally realized after a couple thousand years that things _move_."

I roll my eyes at his snobbery. I think the only reason he attends those useless council meetings is because some perverse part of him loves that they never see through his aggressively facetious show of manners.

I gauge the distance between me, the door and the closet. I _might_ be able to get dressed by the time they come in, or I can hightail it back to the woods. But if I do that I'll have to make another attempt at sneaking in, and I'm sure Damon is not above leading tours around the house all day as if the council is a roving home-security team, guarding against the invasion of improperly clad siblings. By nightfall, their feet will be killing them and he'll still be happily jibbering on about historic wall sconces, making up names and architectural styles as he goes along.

I choose a shirt at random and nearly pop a button as I hurriedly tug the hanger out through the neck. It's way too fancy for Mystic Falls, as usual. When will Damon ever notice that jeans or not he's two thousand dollars overdressed on any given Tuesday? I just got all the buttons unfastened when I'm distracted by the increase in outdoor sounds from the open balcony door.

"Stefan?" Caroline whispers.

"Oh, but wait until you see this. I've saved the best for last, of course," Damon says smugly.

I blur across the room, shoving the shirt into Caroline's surprised hands just as he leads the tour inside.

* * *

**CAROLINE POV**

* * *

I've got one arm into a shirt that feels like heaven and I don't have time to do more than yank the loose half across my naked torso before Damon opens his bedroom door with anticipation in his eyes and a smirk that I want to slap off of his stupid face.

"And in my private collection, we have this delightful little gem," he pauses deliberately for effect as they get a look at what _exactly_ is in his private collection.

"Well," Damon says into the silence of eight adults that have known me since I needed teething toys. "That wasn't exactly the gem I had in mind, but it certainly has curb appeal."

I'm going to kill him.

"And X-men eyes." Damon smiles his pleasant smile, which is as fake as the contents of a Kardashian's brassiere. "Good thing I wore my lead-lined underwear."

Stefan clears his throat pointedly and steps in front of me, which would be more gentlemanly if he were wearing, um, anything.

"You've had your fun, Damon. Why don't you take your tour elsewhere?" Stefan suggests.

"Caroline Marie Forbes," my mother says tightly, finally having recovered her voice and apparently her long-dormant lecturing ability. "When you moved out, I expected you to… well I didn't… I should think that—" she sputters.

"What, _Mom_, do you need to check your parenting app? Oh wait, you probably left your charger at home and your phone went dead." I grab a pillow off Damon's bed and thrust it in front of my fiance's personal business. "Don't worry. I keep a spare for you in my room. It's right next to my ID that says I'm of age and none of your dang business and the house key you gave me when I was _eight _because you couldn't be bothered to be home after work to let me in."

"Well, I think I've seen enough, erm, art," Carol Lockwood says brightly, her eyes lingering on Stefan's pillow for a beat too long to make her words believable. She takes my mom by the arm.

"Liz, let's head downstairs and make some tea, shall we? Damon, take your time, sweetie. We'll wait."

The rest of the council has already heeded their exit cue, and my mom only puts up token resistance before fixing Stefan with a final thin-lipped expression of disappointment and following Carol downstairs. I can see his shoulders wilt a little as he grips the pillow awkwardly over his lap.

I smack him in the arm. "Seriously? You're going to feel guilty for having sex with me?"

"Say it a little louder, Caroline," he says, flushing slightly. "I don't think the Pope heard you."

Damon crosses his arms over his chest, clearly not done enjoying himself. "Now kids, I thought we'd talked about appropriate attire for when I have company over."

I drop the front of the shirt that I've been holding stretched under my armpit and cram my arm into the other armhole, exasperated.

Damon shades his eyes, whistling through his teeth in mock distress. "Easy there. You're not my official sister yet, Caroline. Show some decorum."

"Oh right, like you hav—" I snap that sentence off before I have to see the pain in Stefan's eyes that invariably follows any mention of my very brief stint of "dating" Damon about a thousand and fifty years ago.

"You did this on purpose," I hiss instead. "In front of my _mother, _Damon Salvatore. In case you are not acquainted with it, the linebetween _this _and even semi-appropriate behavior is about two miles," I point furiously. "In the opposite direction. Of you."

He holds up his hands with smug innocence. "Hey, it's not my fault you can't keep track of your britches, sweetheart. And just where do you think you're going with my shirt? That's Kenneth Cole and I know how women like you 'borrow.'"

"I can skin you and wear that instead," I threaten, my whisper hitting a pitch high enough to break any dishware within a half-mile radius.

Stefan chucks the pillow at his brother and stalks over to the closet.

"Gross," Damon complains, swatting the pillow away. "Like I want a pillow you rubbed your johnson on. Keep it for posterity." He winks. "Besides, I think Carol liked it on you."

Stefan emerges from the closet, zipping a pair of borrowed pants and wearing his only-mildly-irritated face. "Care, do you want me to get you some of your clothes or are you good with the shirt? Elena has a robe you could take," he offers.

I turn my glare on him. "_How _are you not more upset that your brother just showed off our goods in front of the entire freaking town? He practically built us a parade float, Stefan!"

He frowns. "I told you to wait outside."

Like I was going to do that when he was ducking under window ledges and jumping onto balconies instead of using the dang door. Of _course _I thought someone was trying to kill us. What else would they do?

Damon's eyebrows bounce playfully. "Ooh, no excuses to hide behind now, Beauty Queen. I always knew you were dying to indulge your exhibitionist side."

"The only thing I am going to be exhibiting is your spinal column," I spit out. "Pranks are one thing, Damon, but this- this—" I sputter.

"So speechlessness is genetic," he says, his eyes sparkling merrily. "Noted."

"Look," Elena says on a long sigh as she appears in the doorway. "You guys, stop it. The tru—"

"Ah-ah-ah," Damon interrupts, wagging a warning finger at her. "Nobody needs a suicide hotline. It's fine, Elena."

"No," I snap, smacking my hands down on my hips without even finishing buttoning my shirt. I can't take it anymore. I can hardly look at him right now.

"You know what's not fine? Leaving your brother to go to war alone is not fine. Not by a long shot." I stomp across the width of his annoyingly classy bedroom so I can poke him right in the chest. "Not when you know how hard blood is for him. Not when you _promised _to be there."

Damon's casual posture suddenly looks like it was carved from glass. My accusing finger softens into a hand on his chest that drops away when I meet his glacial eyes.

"He needed you, Damon. How could you…" I lose my momentum, the breath just falling out of my mouth as I search his face. "Why? I mean, I know it's complicated, I know you guys fight and whatever but—" I shrug, my hands falling back to my sides with a slap. The tension in the silence says everything I want to say.

And Damon says nothing.

His eyes flare very slightly as he pushes away from the doorframe. "You call me, Caroline," he says evenly. "The first time you go to war and you have the first fucking clue what you're talking about." He nods once with an edge and speed that is anything but human. "If you'll excuse me, I have guests."

Elena reaches for his sleeve as he leaves, but his strides are too long and she misses. Her hand pauses for a second in midair and I watch her with pity. She probably didn't know that about him, that he was a deserter. That's not going to be a happy talk for them later, I bet.

She tosses her hair back from her face as she turns to me, the corners of her eyes tight.

Stefan sighs. "Hey, why don't we—"

"No," Elena says, her voice cracking against his. "You know what? I stole your clothes. Not Damon. Me." She laughs bitterly.

"I guess I should have known you'd blame him. He thought it was funny, you know that?" Her eyes are a blade dropping toward Stefan's neck. "He thought it was _funny _that you would blame him. But I didn't. I_ don't."_

I scoff. "Yeah, because it's so out of the realm of possibility that Damon would steal our clothes. Maybe we blamed him because he does that stuff all the time."

She laughs harshly. "Right. And he doesn't care if you blame him, because he's used to everyone expecting the worst of him." She runs a frustrated hand through her hair and then glances down the hallway before stepping into the room and slamming the door behind her.

"No, you know what? That's crap. He doesn't let you think the worst, he _wants_ you to think the worst." Elena focuses on Stefan. "He showed up. Uniform and everything; he was waiting by the tracks and Lexi told him the worst thing for you was _him_." Her mouth twists and tears come into her eyes.

I'm frozen wearing her boyfriend's shirt, and I don't know if I want to argue with her or give her a hug. Stefan's lips part on an anguished breath with no words and I know neither of us have the first idea of what to say.

"And so he left," Elena says, her voice quavering as she hugs her arms across her chest. "He was _lonely, _Stefan," she tells him, keeping her voice low so Damon won't hear from downstairs. "He would never say it like that but he didn't have anything in those days. He was trying to deal with Charlotte and the fact that her feelings for him weren't real, weren't healthy, and he needed you. He needed you to need _him_. So he did both. He stayed hidden because Lexi told him to and he went, because he couldn't leave you."

She touches Stefan's arm and I can see his muscles clench and shiver.

"He watched you every night," she whispers. "He made me swear not to say anything, and maybe I shouldn't have promised. It was stupid, but I thought—" The tears finally spill over and I see Stefan's forehead crumple.

He reaches out to her, but his hand hovers as if it's no longer sure where to land. "Elena…"

"I thought you knew," she whispers urgently, dashing tears from her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Stefan, I thought you must have caught some sign of him there, with vampire hearing and the way I can see, like, everything now. I just figured you were doing the guy thing and not bringing it up."

He shakes his head, swallowing. I go into the bathroom and come back with a handful of toilet paper that I press into Elena's hand before I pull her into a tight hug, pressing her damp nose against the soft shoulder of Damon's shirt. When I release her, I notice that Stefan's pointedly looking away and he looks like he might need me to make a second trip to the bathroom for tissues.

I wrap my arms around both of them and yank them in for a group hug. They're stiff, because we all live together, but it's not like they really, you know, _hug_ anymore. I just squeeze them harder to make up for the awkwardness.

"I'm going to fix this," I announce. "It was my great big foot in my mouth that started this and I should be the one to make it okay."

Stefan clears his throat. "I was distracted, with the blood and I thought maybe… But I was never sure," he tells Elena.

Elena bites her lip, her eyes shining as she looks up at him. My stomach clenches, because I know both Salvatores just go to pieces when she's sad like this and even though I know she doesn't mean for that to happen, I hate that she still has that effect on him.

"I just wish you'd start believing in him, Stefan. After all this time, after everything, he's earned that much." She turns away before she sees the tears that catch in his eyelashes, trembling with the weight of her words.

The door closes quietly behind her. Stefan's fingers twitch, hanging by his sides. I reach for him just as he turns to me and for a second our hands clash and then clasp firmly.

"I—" he starts and I press my cheek against his chest.

"Shh, I know. She doesn't know everything that happened back then. She's wrong, Stefan."

"No," he says into my hair. "She isn't. It's been seventy years and I've never even asked him, Caroline. Not once."

I hug him hard, kissing his chest before I let him go. "I'll meet you in our room, okay?"

I leave him beside Damon's empty bed, because I love Stefan. I love him more than I've ever loved any person ever, more than my mom or Matt or Tyler or Elena or Bonnie. So I know he's not hurting for himself right now, and I know what I need to do to make him better.

"I think vervain is our best bet for early detection," someone is saying. "This place is on well water, anyway, isn't it? So it won't affect any of you?"

When Damon rebuilt the council after the disaster on the Young farm, he did it without lying to them. They know what we are, and that the town isn't in danger from us. They're grateful for our help when it comes to a fight with any of the supernatural creatures that invariably show up in this town, and we're grateful to them for always cleaning up the mess. But that doesn't mean we always agree.

"What am I going to do, carry Purell in my purse like a neurotic soccer mom if I want to wash my hands when I'm not at home?" Damon's voice cuts across the tentative suggestion like a chainsaw through a flower garden. "Fuck that. When we have a vampire infestation, we can bust out the fire hose. Until then, we have a limited supply of vervain and I know a damn vampire when I see one. I'm perfectly happy to skewer them on an individual basis."

I finger-comb my hair and fasten one more button on my crooked, borrowed shirt as I bound down the stairs. I burst into the living room before I can think better of my plan.

"Damon," I call out, interrupting the old argument.

He rolls his eyes. "Somebody wearing pants have anything to say?"

"Don't," I warn him, stalking into the living room and not stopping until I'm all but standing on his toes. When he finally looks at me, there are about six layers of snark and posturing between me and the man who is my friend and words aren't going to make a dent. So I grab him around the waist and hug him hard.

He's holding his usual glass of whiskey and he acts as if that's some sort of impediment to returning my hug, though it never slows him down when it's Elena wrapped around him like a vine.

"I was wrong," I whisper fiercely, and when he doesn't respond, I pull back and say it louder. "I was wrong. We didn't know you went to Egypt. I was a super big jerk and I shouldn't have said that and I'm sorry."

He swallows and his eyes flare and flick to the side before he remembers to take a drink from his glass. "Easy, Blondie. You must have taken a wrong turn on the way to the confessional."

I put a hand flat on his chest and push him a little to get his attention. I know the whole council is watching us with their accusing old-fogy eyes and they're all wondering what kinds of sexual shenanigans are going on in the Salvatore house, but right now I can't bother with them and their bingo night gossip.

"I'm sorry," I tell Damon quietly, my eyes searching for his. "We're sorry. Really. Seriously."

His gaze skates away and his lips start to form their customary sneer, so I pinch him, right in the tender flesh of his stomach.

He yelps, and then laughs. "Easy, Killer. It's fine. You can say your rosary in the morning. Go plant a penance tree or something."

I poke him in the arm. "Seriously."

"Seriously," he echoes, focusing on me for the first time. "For reals, pinky swear, till death do us part. We can do the blood oaths after dinner, 'K? Let the grown-ups talk for a while."

I tilt my chin up and give him a stern look. "It's a deal."

I want to hug him again, but I don't want to push my luck, especially not with so many people wondering what I'm wearing under this shirt. Somehow it would be so much less embarrassing if I weren't wearing my shoes. At least I took off my one, orphaned knee sock.

I march out of the living room, my head held high. I'm a Forbes, and a vampire, and I'm younger, hotter, and stronger than all those old biddies who are going to start whispering behind their hands about us as soon as they think they're out of Damon's earshot. They deserve whatever they'll get when he hears them, too.

I find Stefan perched uncomfortably on the bottom step of the staircase that leads to our wing of the house. I notice that the pants he swiped from Damon belong to a tuxedo, and that he's forgotten to button them. The zipper is slowly peeling apart, leaving them slung dangerously low on his slim hips.

He shoots to his feet when I come around the corner, his green eyes dark with questions even though I know he heard every word of what was said.

I embrace him softly, running my fingernails through his hair. "It's alright. He knows. He's okay."

I should have been born in 1922, not 1992. I would never have let them be so stupid, never would have let them spend seventy years without each other.

Stefan's breath comes out in a rush, curling inside my collar under the curtain of my hair, as if it knows it's safe there. I stretch up onto my tiptoes and hold him tight, knowing that Damon can still hear us. That he knows we're here, and we're not going anywhere.

* * *

**XOXO**

* * *

**Damon POV**

The inside of the Camaro is blissfully quiet, the breeze swimming in through the windows hardly a disturbance to the eight beautifully roaring cylinders under the hood. It's my favorite kind of driving music.

I pull off at the end of our long driveway to check the mail before my passenger speaks for the first time. One of the best things about Elena's little brother is that he's not chatty.

"Hey, thanks for the ride," he says as I lean out the window, noting that it's time to repaint the mailbox. Again.

"You wouldn't have needed the ride if you would have taken me up on my very generous offer to teach you how to work on that Jeep," I point out.

"Yeah, whatever. I figured I'd learn better if I sorted through it on my own."

I snort, glancing through the mail in my lap. People want to save the earth? Abolish grocery coupons. Who the fuck wants to save 33 cents on Spam that bad anyway?

"Yeah, well you figured out enough to break it. That's fifty percent, right?"

Underneath the junk mail is a small, rough-textured envelope, and I flip past it but not before Jeremy sees.

"What's that? It looked old."

Kid thinks he's a historian since Alaric got him reading old journals. Apparently Mystic Falls attracts bad journal writers at roughly the same rate as supernaturally-gifted serial killers. Which explains how Stefan and I both ended up living here again.

Jeremy snatches the mail out of my lap and checks the postmark on the envelope. "Nineteen forty two? Are you freaking kidding me? This stamp looks like an antique, like it might actually be worth something."

I pluck the mail back out of his hands. "Right. All the more reason for you to keep your greasy little hands off of it."

He makes another grab for it, looking curious and I slap his hand away.

"Hey, do you think that hunter's curse still kicks in if the ring brings you back?"

"Try it," he goads, socking me one in the shoulder. "I can make some money bringing kids by on Halloween to see crazy old Uncle Damon in the basement cell. I can probably charge more if you flash 'em some fang."

I pull into the garage next to the Jeep that I had towed here yesterday after it stranded Jeremy on the way back from school.

"Don't touch anything in that engine until I get back," I warn him, hopping out of the car and tipping most of the junk mail into the recycle bin before going upstairs to change my clothes and stash Stefan's letter for later.

The first letter arrived the day after Stefan's family jewels made their grand entrance to my council meeting and Caroline attack-hugged me in public for like the thirtieth damn time since she got engaged to my brother. I wish somebody would tell her that her damn finger-mounted disco ball doesn't give her the right to put her paws all over both brothers.

The letter smelled musty, just like the rest of that packrat midden that Stefan's been carting around with him forever. I don't know why I waited to read it, only that it was three days after it arrived when I slid out of bed well after midnight and took it up to the roof because no one bothers me when I'm up there, not even the girls.

I read it three times, and then I threw it away. But when I went to empty the bathroom trash the next morning, it wasn't there. I threw the second one away in my study, but it didn't stay gone either. After that I just started leaving them on the dresser. My girl's stubborn enough that I could throw them away in Pennsylvania and she'd still find them somehow, but I don't want her digging through the damn trash.

She doesn't need to save the letters. I won't lose a word of them out of my too-perfect memory. It's one of the few kindnesses of human aging, that it doesn't let you keep anything too close. Yet another luxury not afforded to my kind.

I put the latest letter in my bedside table and strip, briefly wondering if I need to wear more than my black boxer briefs for the walk across the house to borrow grease monkey jeans from Stefan. I shrug and pad out the door.

Caroline's gone and if she comes back unexpectedly her reaction is guaranteed to be hilarious. And since I heard the mini fridge in the garage open but not close, it's a good bet that Jeremy is busy debating whether he can get away with drinking one of the beers Kyle leaves here for when he and Matt come over to work on the '55 Chevy pickup they're restoring. Honestly, it's like I'm the only one in Mystic Falls who owns a decent set of tools.

Once in Stefan's room, I step over a pair of high-heeled sandals and make my way to his closet, where I help myself to an old pair of jeans. They fit just right in the hips, but they're worn in different places than mine would be.

His room smells crowded, paper and leather and acetone and the warring ghosts of Caroline's perfume and hand lotion, because the girl never wears just one scent at a time, even now that she can smell well enough to know better. I stalk over and open a pair of windows to air the place out. I don't know why I read his musty letters anyway. They're complete bullshit, an even bigger pack of lies than the journal he kept during the war, and that's saying something.

Even the fact that he wrote them at all was a lie, as if we were brothers who were actually a part of each other's lives, the kind of family who knew where the other one was and cared what they were up to.

I kick Caroline's shoes out of the doorway so he won't trip over them when he gets home and touch the old wood of the doorframe, pausing for just a second with my back to his room that's crowded with memories of a mostly empty life.

In a way, I guess, those letters were the truest lie he's ever told.

I leave the door open behind me when I go.

* * *

_Author's Note: What we would do without the magic that is Goldnox is a question better left un-answered. She did many excruciatingly nice and very important things to this chapter, and I hope you all enjoyed the results. _

_And in case this didn't have enough happy Delena for you, check out Goldnox's new fic, "Clocks and Closed Doors" which is a look at 4x07 when Elena and Damon finally get together, only with a lot of hot and heart-gymnasticizing added scenes that make the on-camera time both more meaningful and more fun!_


	8. Blue Balls

**Chapter 8: Blue Balls**

**DAMON POV**

I sling myself onto my normal stool at the bar and Kyle nods my way, finishing up with a customer down the bar while I glower at the wall of bottles.

When he comes my way I gesture to the Scotch with a brilliantly blue hand.

"Did it hurt?" he asks, taking down the bottle and two glasses.

"What?"

"When those Smurfs mugged you," he suggests, the corner of his mouth twitching. He puts aside one of the glasses that has a water spot on it and picks up another that's flawlessly clear.

"Shut the fuck up," I growl, turning my attention back to the internet search on my phone for exploding wedding cakes.

Kyle pours me three fingers and Ric two and slides the glasses of Scotch across the bar, looking amused.

"Somebody's grouchy today," Kyle observes. "Not getting along with the other members of the band?"

"Band?" I ask absently. All of these advertise safe explosions. I don't want safe. I want something that's going to turn that thousand-dollar cake into a fine mist.

"Blue Man group? I hear you can do some pretty impressive things with a trashcan lid."

My head snaps back around, eyes cauterizing him.

He's moved back by the wall of bottles, safely out of my reach.

"Sorry, sorry," he gasps and takes a deep breath, his mouth wobbling as he tries for a straight face.

I finish my drink and eye Ric's.

"No, stick around," Kyle says. "I got you a present. But I'm serious, I'm really going to hurt myself here if you don't satisfy my curiosity and tell me…" he bats his eyelashes at me, "why you're looking so blue!"

I look away, disgusted, while he cracks up at his own bad joke. "It was personal," I tell him shortly. "A personal…accident."

Kyle leans forward on the bar, his eyes still watering as he nods sagely. "Those edible body paints are a bitch. You've got to tell her to lick more vigorously next time."

He ducks my punch easily and raises an eyebrow, his eyes dancing.

"I got cock blocked," I mutter. "By Vampire Barbie."

"Probably been a while since that happened, eh?" he says, sounding moderately sympathetic, which saves him some facial reconstructive surgery.

"It's been a while since I got the block from somebody I wasn't related to," I correct him. "My brother is the king of me not getting laid. Apparently a trait he has now passed on to his better half."

"I've got to admit. I've never seen a cock-block that left such an erm," Kyle clears his throat. "Visible mark."

"Well, take a tip from me. The former Miss Mystic Falls is not someone you want on your bad side." I nudge my empty glass toward him. "You're off your game today, New York. Getting too used to the small-town pace."

"I was just waiting for you to finish your appetizer." He reaches under the bar and pulls out a bottle, sliding it over to me for my examination.

I whistle through my teeth. "Careful flashing that around in here, Kyle. That's an eighty-dollar bottle of bourbon. You're going to ruin the Grill's long and venerable tradition of bottom-shelf liquor."

"Sweetie, our stuff isn't bottom shelf. You've got to get down on your knees and crawl to even _find_ this crap." He jerks an annoyed nod at the wall of bottles behind him. "It's humiliating."

I break the seal on the bottle. "Is this a belated apology for one of the times you tried to get my girlfriend killed?"

"How about for the time I kicked your ass?" he suggests, leaning his muscular forearms on the bar.

I snort. "Hey, somebody ended up with a hole in their chest, and it wasn't me, pal." I pour myself a finger and a half of bourbon, because if I'm going to have a secret stash at the Grill, I better make it last.

"Drink up. There's plenty more where that came from." Kyle smiles smugly. "Got management to add it to the inventory. I promised them I could sell every drop they brought in."

"I could kiss you right now," I tell him after the first sip, the aged vanilla spice of the bourbon going a long way toward improving my mood.

"Ah, now don't go getting my hopes up, Salvatore."

"I'd just ruin you for other men," I tell him. "You're better off this way."

"I'm better off because that sweet little girlfriend of yours would kick my ever-loving ass if I took a taste," he laughs. "Why don't you give her a call? I'll get her drunk for you. She never lasts more than a couple drinks before she takes you home."

"I don't know about that," I protest, staring moodily into my drink as I remember how I spent the first part of my afternoon.

Kyle chuckles. "Shit, man, I've even seen it work with iced tea." He tops off my drink. "Come on, I want the whole story. Tell me how that hot blonde number got the best of you this time."

"She stole Elena's phone so she could text me to lure me in," I tell him. "But she bagged a bonus and didn't even realize it."

**XOXO**

_**One hour ago**_

**XOXO**

I take the steps two at a time. Liz probably thinks somebody died, I left so fast when that text came in. I can already hear the subtle swish of water from the direction of my bedroom. My plans for this afternoon just got a fuck of a lot more interesting.

I take the last few stairs two at a time and sure enough, I can see Elena's messy bun peeking out of a bathtub mounded high with frothing bubbles. She peeks over her shoulder at me and smiles.

"I was starting to wonder if you were coming."

"With you, baby?" I quip. "It's always a sure thing."

She sticks her tongue out at me, but ruins the effect by wrinkling her nose, which is fucking adorable.

"Sorry, I was across town with Liz," I explain. "We've got a bit of a situation."

"Don't even say the double-a words when I am in the bathtub," she warns.

"Not here," I reassure her. "Asheville. Took out a whole NOLS trekking group this time." I pull off my shirt and toss it on the counter so it won't get wet if we end up splashing a little too much. Because we usually do.

"Probably wasn't the kind of wilderness therapy they had in mind," I tell her, sitting down on the edge of the tub to pull my boots off.

She cuddles her cheek against the small of my back, soapy fingers stroking my hipbone. "I hate you going out looking for trouble, you know that." She sighs. "And then you say things like that and I really can't argue. Tell me you're not taking Jeremy."

"Okay, Jeremy's taking me," I tell her agreeably.

She doesn't respond. How does she manage to make silence sound disapproving? It must be a maternal thing.

I stuff my socks into my boots. "Come on, he's in high school. If we don't give him something meaningful to do with himself he'll just get all apathetic and cranky the way real teenagers do."

"I wish you'd talk to him about moving in with us. He's got his hunter instincts well under control these days, and I know he'd listen to you."

I linger for a moment on the edge of the tub because I like the way her cheek feels against my spine. Was her skin this soft when she was human? I can't remember anymore.

"Nah. He and Donovan love their little bromancy bachelor pad. And Bridezilla and her boy toy are about two roommates too many as it is."

She presses a kiss to the back of my hip. "You gonna join me before the water gets cold?"

"With you in there? I'll be lucky if I don't blister." I turn around before I unbutton my jeans, because she likes to watch.

And I like to watch her watching.

My zipper goes down nice and slow and she swallows audibly, then narrows her eyes at my crooked smile. "You do that on purpose," she accuses.

"Hey, it's not my fault you're a pervert," I tell her, tossing my jeans at the countertop. "I don't know why I let you objectify me the way you do."

"Because you love me," she replies saucily, watching me through her eyelashes as she makes room for me in the tub.

"Nope," I tell her with a cocky grin, and she splashes me, outraged.

"Take that back!" she demands as I settle in across from her.

I shake my head, trying to look innocent. "Can't. I don't really like you that much."

"What?" She glares at me and dives across the tub to tickle my sides. I quickly nab both of her hands in one of mine and squeeze hard while she struggles.

I take a loose strand of her hair and tuck it back into her bun. "You're kind of ugly," I tell her, kissing the tip of her nose. "And vindictive."

"I am not!"

"You just tried to tickle me," I remind her. "Viciously, in retaliation. I'd say that qualifies."

"You want to see vindictive?" she threatens, giving up on getting her hands free.

"Uh-huh."

Her fangs lengthen dangerously, a lacy network of delicate black lines tracing outward from her eyes even as she pounces.

For all her show of ferocity, her bite is surprisingly gentle and I don't fight it. Instead, I release her hands and wrap my arms around her waist, pulling her closer into my lap.

I let out a long breath and relax against the reclined back of the tub, stroking the graceful line of her spine as her tongue teases the sensitive double puncture wound in my neck. I don't know why, but as soon as she bites me, it's like that whole area hardwires straight into my dick. I tilt her hips so the friction soothes my growing arousal while she feeds.

I'm floating mentally as well as physically before she pulls away, licking the last drops of blood from her lips. She gives me one of her sweet little cheerleader smiles, and the combination of that and the touch of my blood on her fangs is the hottest fucking thing that this century has seen.

I kiss her before the points of her canines have blunted because I want to cut my tongue on them and soothe the pain in her mouth. Her moan has the rhythm of a heartbeat flooding down into my lungs and when I pull away, my head is spinning so hard that I wonder if she took too much and maybe I need to feed.

Elena slips around behind me while I'm still trying to drag my cerebral functions back onto the playing field and when she whispers in my ear, it doesn't do a goddamn thing to clear my head.

"Do you take it back?"

I turn my head and catch her lips, tracing her cheek with one finger as I kiss her.

"I love you," I tell her, the words rumbling straight out of the core of me, dark and gravitational and a whole different language from the shit that gets stuck on greeting cards with glitter.

Elena wraps her arms around my shoulders from behind and nibbles the base of my neck. "I love you, too," she whispers and I clear my throat and rub at a water spot on the faucet, because it's embarrassing as all fuck that I still get all schoolgirl every time she says that.

My girlfriend places her hands on my shoulders and squeezes, firmly massaging the muscles there.

"Hey, if you were at Liz's, how did you run the water for the bath?" she asks me after a minute, digging her thumbs into that magic spot on the insides of my shoulder blades that unwinds me like an old cassette tape.

I groan and completely forget the topic. "What?"

"I mean, how did you even know I was going to be in our room just now, much less get the timing right so the water was still hot?" she asks.

One of her hands leaves my shoulder, stroking down my chest. I suck in a breath as her little hand wraps around my growing erection.

"Never mind," she says, a smile in her voice. "I know you don't like to give away your sneaky little secrets. It was very smooth, that's all," she admits.

Her hand stroking me feels so good that it takes me a second to realize that there's something not right about this.

"Elena, you sent me a text," I remind her, pulling away in growing alarm. "Saying to meet you in the tub."

Except of course she didn't send it, or she wouldn't have asked. And if she just happened to see the bath waiting when she came into our room, this is a trap meant for me, not her. My mind starts scrolling through a long list of people who might want to kill me creatively while I sniff the water, a cold feeling creeping up inside my chest.

"Do you feel okay?" I demand. "Tingling, numbness, burning?"

"Are we playing doctor again?" she asks, but her smile fades as she registers my alarm. "Are you okay, Damon? I didn't send you a text."

"Not good," I tell her tightly and pull her out of the tub, stripping bubbles off her skin with my hands. And that's when I see it. Her skin doesn't look right.

"Elena?" I ask, my voice catching hard in my throat behind memories of her on a table screaming while I pulled poisoned nails out of her skin. Her eyes, delirious from the poison.

"What?" she asks, frowning at my chest. "Damon, what-?" She gingerly touches my pectoral muscle. "You're- wait, what the heck?"

I turn on the shower, shoving her under the spray with more urgency than gentleness.

"Do you feel anything?" I demand, squirting body wash directly onto her skin and scrubbing with near-vampire speed. "Quick, help me. Get the soap everywhere, right _fucking _now. Dizziness? Nausea?" I grab her chin, forcing her to look at me. Her pupils are normal. "Can you see me? Is your vision blurry? Do you see anything that shouldn't be here?"

"Damon, stop it, you're scaring me," she says. "I feel fine, but your skin looks weird," she says, bewildered.

I grab the puffy ball thing she likes to shower with and glop soap onto it, flipping her around and scouring her back.

"Damon, I'm _fine,_" she protests. "Wait." She turns around and looks me over, amusement starting to creep into her eyes. "It's getting brighter." She glances down at the splotchy streaks of blue appearing on her skin and she smiles reluctantly, shaking her head. "Damon, I think she got you this time."

"What do you mean?" I ask her, fighting the urge to wrestle her to the ground and scrub the holy hell out of her until I get this weirdness off of her precious skin.

"Caroline," she explains, holding her arm under the stream of the shower and watching as the color holds fast. She shakes her head and laughs. "I think we just got dyed-to-match."

**XOXO**

_**One hour later**_

**XOXO**

"And then of course we couldn't have sex, because she didn't want to risk getting that weird dye in-," I clear my throat. "So yeah. And now I'm cut off until I can figure out how to get this crap off of me. God knows how Caroline managed to find a dye that would leave the water clear and us…like this. But she swears she got it off the internet, not from a witch, which saved her a really epic vervaining."

"A loofah and some nice sea salt exfoliant would probably do the trick," Kyle tells me.

"You think I'm going to sea salt exfoliant my what now?" I ask him, my eyebrows snapping down.

"Oh come on. The big tough vampire can't take a little scrub a dub dub?" The bartender teases. "Your johnson'll heal." At my expression, he relents. "Hey, seriously though, I used to date a massage therapist. If you want, I can make you up a homemade batch with sugar and grapefruit juice. The citrus is good at breaking down oils or grease," he offers.

I mumble something and reach for the bottle. He slaps my hand away. "Don't mess with a professional's business," he warns. "And I didn't quite catch that. What did you say?"

"I said thanks," I growl. "And actually, never mind the drink. I've got to get going." I grab Ric's glass and tip it toward his silent chair before I shoot it. And as usual, it doesn't even take the edge off of that empty chair.

"I'll drop the exfoliant by the house later," Kyle says with a knowing smile. "You're welcome."

I tap my hand twice on the bar and push out of my seat. "Tell Van Helsing to take Saturday off, by the way. He and I have an appointment to keep."

"Should I take Saturday off, too?" Kyle asks, the humor dropping out of his voice.

I shrug. "We've got it. You can tag along if you're bored though. Last animal attack follow up netted us a ten-top, so there might be a few of them. Could be nice to have an extra hand on the shovel at the end of the day."

Kyle nods once, his hazel eyes sharp. "I'll pick ya'll up at dawn on Saturday. We can take my truck."

I give him a little two finger wave over my shoulder and stroll out of the Grill.

The first thing I see when I hit the street outside is a familiar blue car. Probably came to gloat. Her blonde head is bent forward, like she's busy with something. If I'm careful, I might be able to nail her rear passenger tire before she catches me.

I cross the street further down and circle back under the cover of parked cars. I reach into my jacket for the stake I always carry and hope it's strong enough to make it through a tire sidewall. When I get to the last car before Caroline's, though, I focus in and realize she's not on the phone. She's crying.

I run to the driver's side door and wrench it open, regretting it as soon as I notice there are no bloodstains on her clothes.

She jumps in surprise and looks up at me, her eyes miserably swollen. Fuck. This is the wrong kind of emergency entirely.

"What? Couldn't get the right color neckties for all the doves?" I snark.

We all knew Caroline was going to make Bridezilla look like somebody's pet gecko, but she's been hitting new heights of wedding hysteria for the past week. I am going to absolutely lose my shit if I just came riding to the rescue because she was crying over the calligrapher not putting the right swirl on the tail of the g's.

"N-n-nooo!" she wails, burying her face in a tissue. I flinch at her vehemence. This looks a little more serious than her normal type-A hissy fit.

"Did Stefan forget your 92-day anniversary or something, or do I need to actually kick somebody's ass?" I ask her suspiciously.

"No," she says into the tissue. "It's the wedding."

I groan.

"Not like that!" she protests, taking a blind swipe at me that I easily dodge. "I know you think I'm total psycho bride or whatever, but it's important to me."

I should definitely excuse myself before her drama bomb goes off, but something about her tone has my feet nailed to the asphalt. Caroline moved in a couple months after the engagement, so I've had more practice than I ever wanted at decoding her moods. This one reads about an 8 out of 10 on her existential crisis scale. The last wedding-related crying jag (something about tablecloths, candy and inconsistent color wheels) only weighed in at a three, by my count.

Shit.

"It's just that," she bites her trembling lip. "Stefan's _it_ for me, you know? So this is going to be the only wedding I get."

"Uh-huh," I say, glancing across the street. I wouldn't have come within a mile of this car if I thought she was going to cry on my shoulder about how much she loves Stefan. For fuck's sake, everybody in the county knew how much she loved Stefan until I soundproofed the house. Which, come to think of it, is probably the closest I've ever come to doing a public service.

Her shoulders start to shake again.

The problem with being a vampire is that no one buys it when you fake a heart attack. Maybe a seizure, if I could get my hands on some hunter-marked props. I make a mental note to hit Kyle up for some so I can be prepared for these kinds of situations in the future.

"Now that- now that I'm a va-va-vampire," she sobs, "I only get _one_ one wedding, and that's it!" She blows her nose loudly and waves her hands. "I know you think I'm stupid, but in twenty years, we probably won't even have computers that can read the digital pictures from our wedding."

"They still have photo albums, you know. This isn't the fucking Jetsons," I tell her.

"Yeah, and our clothes will go further and further out of style until we look like wedding pictures of Gram and Gramps." She looks surprisingly hopeless at this possibility, and I kind of wish I still thought she was only worried about fashion.

I roll my eyes. "I'm going to kick myself for saying this later, but you know you can have more than one wedding, right?"

She sniffs and peeks up at me, her wet eyelashes clumping together and making her look like a sad, blue-eyed cartoon kitten.

"Stef's the most pussy-whipped son of a bitch on the eastern seaboard," I remind her. "You can have a wedding every decade if you want."

"It's not-" she sniffles. "Not the same." The next wave of sobs catches in her throat, making her voice even more painfully shrill than usual. "I mean, I've already graduated high school and I'm getting married. I can't have babies, or grow old, so after college, then what? That's pretty much all the major life stuff. I'll just be…done," she says, staring at the soggy tissue in her lap.

I look longingly at the Grill as she starts to cry again. I could text Kyle to come out and pinch hit for me, but the dinner rush is well underway, judging by the cars in the parking lot.

"You could make them different colors?" I offer with a hint of desperation. "Remember, it took you a month to decide between blue and yellow or black and white? You wouldn't have to decide, you could do both."

There's a short pause in the wet, whiny sounds from inside the car, which I take as a good sign. "You could do them in different places," I suggest, wracking my brain for all the different wedding option discussions I've unfortunately overheard in the last few months. "You could do one on top of a building in the city at night, so you can see the stars. Or in that garden in Savannah with all the viney things you liked in that picture that you kept leaving around for Stefan to find. You could have a beach one. You like the beach," I tell her hopefully.

She throws her arms around my waist, crying even harder. Shit. Fuck.

Maybe I should just try to piss her off? God, I suck at this comforting crap. My normal MO is just to hold Elena until she stops crying and I can get her to a bed and focus all my energy into making her forget her own name.

That thought makes me aware that Caroline is hugging me uncomfortably close to my crotch, and I squat down next to the car so she can reach me better.

She squirms her head in under my chin in that spot that all girls seem genetically programmed to prefer and I have a weird déjà vu flash of the exuberant, suffocating hugs she would greet me with back when we were "dating." She always talked like she was three Frappuccinos into a cocaine bender in those days. Thank fuck Stefan didn't want to marry that version.

"Why are you being so sweet?" she sniffles. "I dyed you-," she hiccups. "Dyed you blue."

"I know," I tell her, giving up and putting my arms around her. "I'm really fucking blue."

She giggles, in a stuffy, nasally kind of way.

"I'm going to be rampantly pissed at you for it later," I warn her.

"I know," she whispers and her arms tighten around my back in a way that almost makes me reconsider my diabolical scheme for revenge. She feels smaller. She's so damn bossy, her personality barely leaves space for the rest of us in a room. I forgot how little she was.

"Did you really say that your life was over because you'd already graduated high school?" I ask her, my voice dripping incredulity. "Because if you say those were your glory days, you know I have to smack you, right?"

She huffs a little reluctant laugh. "Not like that. I just- I don't know."

"Listen, Beauty Queen," I tell her, stepping back and checking to see if she left anything nasty on my shirt. "Quit with the whiny human shit. You get to live as many lives as you want, be as many different people as you want. If you're dumb enough to marry my brother once, hell, you're probably dumb enough to marry him ten more times. Nothing's over, okay? That's supposed to be the good news. Nothing's over ever again." I shrug. "Except puberty, thank sweet baby Jesus."

She pulls another Kleenex out of the tiny pack on her lap. Leave it to Caroline to even have her own box of tissues on hand, just in case.

"I wish vampires didn't cry," she gripes.

"Pfft," I say dismissively. "If you didn't, you'd wish you did."

"You know, you didn't fool me," she says, looking up at me with her damp, cartoon-kitten eyes.

I raise a skeptical eyebrow.

"Leaving that new Saint Laurent jacket in my closet so I'd think it was Stefan that got it for me. I know it was you."

"You don't give baby bro enough credit," I tell her cryptically.

"He would have wrapped it," she points out.

I ignore that. "You good now?"

She nods, glancing up at me self-consciously. "Thanks."

"Oh don't worry," I tell her, tapping the roof of the car with one electric blue hand before I take off. "I'm going to give you something to cry about soon enough."

* * *

Author's Note: _Thanks to everyone who has been reading and reviewing- you make this story so much more fun to write!_


	9. The Feast

_Author's Note: Huge thanks and cyber bouquets to latbfan today, who wrote me a romantic Elijah/Katherine scene taking off from "American Gothic" for my birthday! Check it out: Chapter 28 "Echoes of Redemption" in her story "Bourbon for Breakfast."_

_So this one is for goldnox and latbfan (again), who talked me into posting early (again). It is so obviously their fault that I'm incapable of sticking to a weekly posting schedule (clears throat). Definitely their fault. _

* * *

**Chapter 9: The Feast**

**ELENA POV**

I wake and there's an empty pang in my chest even before I make it all the way back to full awareness. I reach for his side of the bed but I already know it will be empty because I'm cold. He got me an electric blanket for the infrequent nights when he is gone, but he was supposed to be back tonight so I didn't turn it on.

It's not like I need it. I'm the perfect temperature, always, but sometimes that's more unnerving than comforting, especially when I'm trying to sleep. When Damon's here, our faint body heat combined is enough to make the bed feel as warm as it used to be when I was still human.

I sit up, chewing my lip, and check my phone.

Nothing new.

He, Kyle and Jeremy went to Asheville yesterday morning to look into some animal attacks, and he'd texted hours ago to say they were all safe and headed home, but not to wait up.

I'll just peek downstairs and see if he's having a drink to wind down before he comes to bed. Or maybe showering in one of the guest bathrooms. It's weird now that the bedroom wings are soundproofed because I can't hear anyone coming or going downstairs.

I swing my feet to the floor and slip on my robe. It's getting a little threadbare and there's a coffee stain on the hem, but perversely the older it looks the more Damon seems to like it. He bought it for me when I was forced to move into the boarding house right after my transition. I'm convinced that the only reason he chose something so inelegantly, fuzzily pink was because he wanted me to relax here, to feel like it was really my home. So even though it's long overdue, I won't replace it as long as it makes Damon smile.

Honestly, I'd wear acid green, leopard-fur-trimmed lederhosen if it made Damon happy, so I suppose I should be happy it's just an old pink robe he likes best.

I pad silently down the stairs, skipping the second and seventh step because they creak and sneaking up on Damon without him hearing me is my white whale. I've only managed it four times in the year since I became a vampire. I'm not sure what was better: getting to rib him about it afterward, or seeing the light of pride in his eyes when he realized what I'd done.

When the whisper of voices finally reaches my ears, I hug myself, my skin singing with relief. I know it's silly to freak out every time they go out hunting, but after everything that's happened to us I can't seem to help myself.

I pause in the hallway, listening. The only illumination in the whole house is the flickering firelight from the hearth, and I struggle for a second before I decipher the dark lumps as men, relaxing on each of the two couches in front of the fire.

"Hey easy over there, Lumberjack. Just sip it." Damon says and I smile, pressing my knuckles against my lips.

I have to shake my head at the old nickname. Only Damon could make something as traumatic as ax murdering a hybrid sound commonplace and maybe a little bit funny.

Jeremy snorts. "Like you do? I think your 'sips' are like three shots apiece."

"I'm up against vampire metabolism here. You may be hunter immortal now, but you've still got the human plumbing to worry about."

Jeremy makes a noncommittal sound.

"Drinking is just like being a new vampire," Damon tells him. "You've gotta go slow, and pay attention. There's this moment when you feel great, and all you can think about is how you want to feel even _better._" I can hear the faint movement of liquid as he takes a drink. "But it's a trick. Because if you keep going you'll just feel worse."

"Cause you yak," Jeremy agrees companionably.

"Mmm hmm." Damon chuckles. "I remember this dance, when I was about sixteen. I was wearing a brand-new waistcoat and I'd gone in for four fittings, because I wanted it to make my shoulders look bigger."

Jeremy laughs. "You fucking kidding me, man? Tell me you didn't wear shoulderpads."

"Everything but," Damon admits unabashedly. "I was all about the ladies back then."

"Yeah. Back then," Jeremy deadpans and Damon wings a throw pillow at him that Jeremy catches one-handed.

I retreat without breathing, pausing when I get halfway up the stairs. I don't want to disturb the moment because Jeremy so rarely gets Damon all to himself, but I haven't quite drunk my fill of their deep, familiar voices yet.

"Anyway, I managed to snag a dance with Dorothy Whittaker, who was seventeen. She had these huge, fucking beautiful knockers," Damon sighs.

I clap a hand over my mouth and try to swallow my giggles.

"And she'd always stuff them into too small of a corset because small waists were more fashionable than big racks. So she'd pass out about twice as often as the other girls. Anyway, this was right around the time my dad started letting me drink at balls, and I was hammered. I missed like three steps of the Lancer's Quadrille, which was a giant fucking deal and I knew Dorothy was never going to dance with me again."

"Thank God we don't have to do that shit nowdays," Jeremy says fervently. "Learning dance steps? Seriously? The grope and sway is about as much as I want to have to do."

I frown and nearly give myself away by yelling at him, because what the heck? My little brother thinks of slow dancing as the _grope_ and sway? And I let Bonnie date him? Is he actually a skeeze?

"Tell me about it. Mystic Falls has always had way too many dances. It's probably the supernatural vortex just finding a whole new way to fuck us all over." I hear Damon's footsteps crossing the living room, and a single splash of liquid as he refills his drink, but not Jeremy's. I nod approvingly into the darkness.

"Anyway, I was about to boot it all over Dorothy's gorgeous tits and my new waistcoat, but I was trying to hold out because I was absolutely certain that if I could wait long enough, she'd swoon and I'd get to catch her."

Jeremy bursts out laughing. "So did you barf first, or did she faint first?"

"Oh, there's no way I'm telling you the end to that story. Not unless you pay up with some blackmail material of your own. Stefan's the only one still alive who knows that story, and we've got way too much dirt on each other to dare to spill any of it."

"Okay, let me think."

They relax in companionable silence for a minute and I sit down on the stairs, hugging my knees to my chest. I definitely don't want to miss this.

"Alright, I've got one," Jeremy says. "So, Jenna was coming to visit, and it had been almost a year since we'd seen her, cause she was real busy. Her and my mom were close and my mom was really excited so she made this like, feast. To celebrate."

I can hear the smile in his voice, and it warms something in the pit of my stomach.

"It wasn't Thanksgiving or anything, but she went all out," Jeremy continues. "A ham, stuffing, yams, pies, mashed potatoes, a whole tray of weird cheese. She'd been cooking all day, and then she put everything in the fridge to keep for later, because Jenna was flying in and they had to drive all the way to Charlottesville to pick her up."

"Your blackmail story is like Martha Stewart wholesome, Gilbert. I need some actual dirt or about three more bottles of booze if I'm going to spill my teenage antics to you."

"Just wait, man. So anyway, I bought a dime bag, and I was just waiting for my parents to leave for the airport so I could smoke in the backyard. But Mom wasn't done cooking and they took for-damn-ever and by the time they finally left, I was all sick of waiting so I smoked two joints instead of one."

"Wait, how old were you?" Damon interrupts.

"Just barely fifteen."

Damon snorts. "Oh you were so fucked. I bet you were a total one-hit wonder, too."

"Yeah," Jeremy admits. "Pretty much. Cause I got the munchies like you wouldn't believe. I ate everything in my room, and then I remembered. The feast."

Damon chuckles, a deep rumble that runs gooseflesh down my arms. God, I love the sound of his voice.

"I told myself I'd just have a little taste of a couple things, and they wouldn't even notice when they got back, cause there was so much. But oh man, Damon. It was so good. Like _so_ fucking good. And I just wanted a couple more bites, and a couple more, and pretty soon I had everything out of the fridge, laid out around me on the floor so I could stuff it back into the fridge real quick if they got back early."

"Highly dignified, Baby Gilbert."

Jeremy laughs. "I tried to sort of lift up the top crust of the pie so I could taste the filling but the pie would still look okay. Except that I ended up eating out most of the filling so I had this freaking deflated pie in front of me. Anyway, about that time I just gave up and microwaved some of the stuff. I mean, it was really good cold, and all I could think about was how much _better _it would be if I heated it up. So I did."

I'm biting my knuckles to keep from laughing by now, because I remember the end to this story and looking back on it, it's painfully funny.

"My mom used to make the best mashed potatoes. Buttery with a hint of cream, and she'd get out the cake mixer and whip them until they were perfectly smooth and really fluffy, you know. They felt just, like, perfect on my tongue. And then I thought, if they feel this good on my tongue, how would they feel…on my _face_?"

Damon chokes on his drink. "No."

"Oh yeah," Jeremy says, laughing.

"No you fucking didn't," Damon protests. "You're making this shit up."

"Nope. And Damon? They felt fucking _amazing._"

Damon cracks up laughing, not even trying to be quiet and I grin into the darkness. I don't know if I've ever heard him laugh that hard. Ever.

"They were just warm and soft, like a hot bath but better. It's a good thing Elena walked in, or I might have gotten the idea to strip down and go the whole nine yards, you know? Mom made a _lot _of potatoes."

"Elena caught you? Yikes. Wish I had a recording of _that _lecture."

"Nah. That was before she got all mom-ish. She used to be cool, man. We snuck some vodka together one time, in her closet like that would keep our parents from catching us if they walked in. Anyway, we played Monopoly with all these made-up rules just drunk as hell until about four in the morning and then went to school hungover-" Jeremy laughs. "It was awful. And she beat me at the Franken-opoly too."

I frown. He makes it sound like I'm like sixty or something. I'm fun, dammit.

"Anyway she laughed her ass off at me, sitting on the floor in the middle of this destroyed feast, mashed potatoes all the way to my eyebrows, man. But then she was like, we've got to clean this up before mom and dad get home."

"Tell me there's a picture," Damon begs. "Just one picture before you washed your face."

"No, sorry. Neither one of us thought of it at the time. Besides, I would have burned it a long time ago. Anyway, the problem was that I had eaten this totally incredible amount of food, and there was barely anything left but part of a ham and the gutted pie."

"Busted…" Damon sing songs.

"I would have been, yeah, because I was stoned as shit and couldn't think of anything to do except run away. Like literally, up the street. Elena talked me out of it, told me she'd think of something."

"Did she lie for you?" Damon sounds interested.

"Nah. Dad always caught her when she lied. He could call it from three blocks away. And I couldn't do it because I had to fake sick and hide upstairs because my eyes were all bloodshot."

"So what did you do?"

"Stole the neighbor's dog."

"Nice," Damon says, as if this is the obvious solution.

"Oh yeah. Elena made me steal him and then we let him loose in the kitchen. When my parents got home we said he ran inside when we went out to get the mail and that the refrigerator door hadn't closed all the way because the fridge was stuffed and he pulled out all the food. We let him take his time on the leftovers so they were all gnawed and muddy and stuff."

Damon's laughing again, which makes it hard to hear Jeremy, so I lean forward, not willing to miss a word.

"We ended up going to Sizzler and Jenna took all these pictures of the mess and put them on Facebook with captions like mom's cooking was so bad we had to give it to the dog. She was a lot of fun before my parents died, too."

"She wasn't half bad when I met her," Damon says. "Except that she hated me. Said she'd dated 'many of me,'" he snorts. "As if there's anything like me running around loose in rural Virginia."

"Oh yeah, Casanova?" Jeremy challenges. "So what kind of smooth moves did you pull out for that girl at the dance?"

"Stroke of fucking brilliance, actually. The last time I stumbled, I looked up at Dorothy and I told her," he raises his voice into a mocking southern accent. "'I'm so sorry, Miss Whittaker. Your beauty makes it nigh impossible to pay proper attention to my dancing.'"

"Good save," Jeremy acknowledges.

"Shit yeah it was. It was true enough, too, even without the alcohol. I was so tongue-tied that that was the first thing I'd managed to say to her since asking her to dance. Afterwards, she agreed to a turn about the terrace, and I was leaning in to kiss her and lost it."

"No way! You yarfed _on her boobs?_" Jeremy demands. "That is so fucking nasty, man."

"No, worse. _I _swooned," Damon snorts. "She tried to catch me, we went down, and I woke up to her mom smacking the crap out of me with her fan because she thought I was getting fresh and didn't realize I was unconscious at first." He whistles through his teeth. "Got a granddaddy of a hiding for that one when I got home, too."

Jeremy snickers. "I love the mental picture of passed-out-Damon taking a whupping from some old lady with a fan."

I hear a creak of the leather couch cushions. "I'm going to head for bed before I give you any more leverage on me. I'll drop you back home in the morning," Damon says, his voice distorted like he's yawning. "Your room should be good to go from last time."

I can hear him poking at the fire, probably spreading out the coals so it is safe to leave it for the night. "You know your sister's still after me to get you to move in."

"Yeah, you guys so want me over here cramping your style," Jeremy says, with a hint of discomfort in his tone.

"Don't be an ass," Damon says, and there's a soft sound. Maybe they threw another pillow.

"Besides," he says, and I can just hear his cocky smirk. "There's not much that can cramp _this _style."

Jeremy snorts.

There's a thunk as someone sets down a glass. "Room's here. Up to you."

"Yeah," Jeremy chuckles uncomfortably. "I'm good, man. Besides, Matt was staying all by himself in that rental after Vicki died. I don't want to bail on him, and the bills are cheaper for him staying at my place."

"Sure," Damon agrees easily. "Just sayin'." There's a pause. "Kicked some serious ass today. You oughta get some sleep."

"I'm going to stay up for a bit," Jeremy says. "See you in the morning."

"Going to stay up and help yourself to all my good booze is more like it," Damon sneers. "A slow learner, is what you are."

"Yeah, well at least I didn't _swoon_ on my date, Scarlett," Jeremy teases and there's a smack and the scrape of furniture sliding over the hardwood, then some laughter and grunts as they tussle.

I rise and creep back to our room, slipping out of my robe and crawling under the covers with a smile still warming my face. I leave the door open and listen contentedly to the guest shower kick on down the hallway. When Damon finally slides under the covers with me, I don't bother pretending to be asleep.

I roll over and slide my hands down his body, feeling every familiar curve of muscle, hard and intact.

"I'm fine, love." He drops a kiss on my forehead. "Go back to sleep."

"How many were there?"

"A lot," he admits. "But they didn't give us much trouble."

"Did Jeremy-" I ask, hesitating.

He strokes my hair, smoothing it over the bare skin of my back. "Nah. We've got a good system now. We knock them all down like bowling pins, and when we're done playing, I perforate 'em."

"So Jeremy and Kyle's marks don't grow and make them want to kill more," I realize. "And so the kills aren't on his conscience." I nuzzle my head further in under his chin and squeeze my arms around him. "Damon, you can't take the weight for everyone."

"Pfft," he says dismissively. "A bunch of kid-killing vampires? I probably shouldn't tell you this, but it really doesn't bother me, Elena. I mean, maybe it should, but fuck 'em. They needed somebody to hit their off switches, and I had two free hands. That's a win win in my mind."

I turn my head enough to let me kiss his throat. "I just want you to be okay."

"Not a scratch on me," he promises, which of course means nothing because he would have healed already. "Or on Jeremy. Kid's getting fast. Kyle's not bad, either, for a hunter with a day job. Did I ever tell you about the time I had my hand up in his chest to rip his heart out and he managed to fight me off? Only time I've ever seen that move, believe me."

"I don't just mean physically," I tell him, ignoring his attempts to sidetrack me, propping myself up on my elbow and searching his face.

"Maybe_ this_ time it's okay, but it isn't always. You say that you don't mind the dirty work but you don't have to do it alone anymore. If something has to be done, there's me and Stefan and Kyle and Caroline and Matt now." I trace his cheekbone. "I know about the nightmares, Damon."

He rolls onto his back, taking me with him so I'm perched on top of his chest. "The only thing I have nightmares about is losing you," he says, and then hesitates.

"And them," I finish for him, because I know he won't.

I don't know why he's fine admitting how he feels about me but he thinks it's some big secret that he loves our whole weird family of vampires and hunters. Even Matt's perched on the stool with him and Kyle at the Grill more often than not, though Damon has never and will never say the word friend aloud in conjunction with my ex-boyfriend.

"Yeah, it'd be a real hardship to have you to myself for once." He affects a pout and I nip at his full lower lip, listening to his breathing catch.

"I'm just saying we're here if you need us," I tell him, running my hand through his night-dark hair.

"Oh, I need you," he promises, trailing a hand up the back of my thigh. "Mostly I need you to start wearing pajamas if you want to get any sleep ever again."

"I sleep really well without pajamas," I purr, shifting my legs apart. "After a while."

He traces the line between my thigh and my backside with gentle fingers and I squirm under his patient hands, hoping for more.

"Naughty girl," he rumbles. "Staying up late. Eavesdropping. What am I going to do with you?" He cups my bottom and squeezes threateningly.

So much for being quiet.

I look up at him with wide, innocent eyes. "I can be good," I promise.

"Oh yeah?" he challenges, his river-colored eyes gleaming in the low light.

"Mmm hmm." I grin at him and slide down under the covers. "I'll show you."

* * *

_Author's Note: Yes, folks, the mashed potato story is based on a true story. It wasn't me, but I've been sworn to secrecy on who it actually was. Other than the neighbor's dog part, it's all true._

_If the T-rating has you dying for some Delena lemons, head on over to my website and check out "Willing," the dirty little one-shot I wrote about Damon and vampire Elena sharing a feed and what that leads to… Find it at: michellehazenbooks dot com /willing/_

_Or, try one of my other stories on this website, "Inevitable" or "Desperate Love" both of which are lemon-tastic._


	10. Master of My Domain

_Author's Note: Title references an old Seinfeld episode called "The Contest," and if you've never seen it, consider yourself culturally deprived._

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**Chapter 10: Master of My Domain**

**DAMON POV**

"Stefan, did you borrow my pliers?" I call up the stairs.

"Uh," he pauses. "Maybe? Let me look around."

I smirk as I take the stairs two at a time up to his wing of the house. Kid takes the bait just as easily now as he did when he was ten and I told him the worms in apples suck up all the sugar so they're the sweetest part to eat.

"Wine, beautiful countryside…come on, you'd love it," Stefan says, continuing the conversation that I just interrupted.

"The French Riviera is so 1990's," Caroline complains. "I used to watch movies about it when I was little."

"Is that where all my missing tools are ending up?" I ask with an artificial smile as I stride into his room without an invitation. "Because I'm about to start rubbing them with vervain."

Stefan's got his journal laid out across his desk, and Caroline's bottom is perched directly in front of it like a cat who's jealous at the attention paid to paper products. He's ignoring her again for the moment while he digs through his desk drawer, but I'm sure the ploy was working just fine until I showed up.

"I borrowed a pair when the latch on my window was bent," he mutters. "They've got to be in here somewhere."

"What do you care? You've got like forty-two pairs of pliers, Damon," Caroline rolls her eyes. "And here's a clue. You're a vampire. Use your fingers."

"Oh, I do," I drawl. "Very well."

"El-_ena_!" she howls.

Stefan chuckles and she glares at him.

"_What_ is funny about your brother being disgusting?"

"Nothing. It's just that the third line of any conversation between you two is '_Elena!_'" he says, imitating Caroline's indignant yelp to perfection.

"That's because Sergeant Pom Pom here thinks she needs a bodyguard," I drawl.

"More like Rabid Animal Control," Caroline shoots back.

Stefan bites the insides of his cheeks, which doesn't do much to hide his smile. "What were you saying about a family vacation, honey?"

"This again?" I complain. "Barbie, we're not going to go play Vampire Brady Bunch on the French Riviera for shit's sake."

"Why not?" she bursts out. "You're just as tired of Mystic Falls as I am, and we _are _a family, and all your stupid Twilight and MTV Real World jokes aren't going to change that."

"The only thing we have in common with a real family is that we don't get along," I tell her with a sharp smile.

She makes a face at me but I ignore her, turning away to rummage through Stefan's dresser drawers.

Stefan chuckles softly. I ignore him too.

"What, you think he keeps pliers in his sock drawer?" Caroline asks, eyeing me suspiciously.

"The last time I was missing the cheese grater, I found it next to his dress shoes," I point out.

"That's kind of a long story," Stefan says. "But it's not like I put it there on purpose."

"Caroline, is this about the wedding?" Elena says impatiently as she strides into the room, the heels on her boots clicking on the hard wood.

I sneak a peek at her even though I shouldn't, because I love how long her legs look in those boots. Once I catch sight of tight calves under smooth, soft leather, it takes me a minute to remember what I should be doing. I blink and snap my eyes back to the task at hand, dropping a tiny plastic packet from my sleeve into my palm and ripping it open with a twist of my fingers, keeping my hands deep in the dresser drawer so my future sister-in-law doesn't catch a glimpse of what I'm doing.

"I told you Damon doesn't have to help with anything he doesn't want to, and he doesn't have time to build you twenty tiny bridges," Elena tells Caroline.

"I do have time," I point out. "I just refuse to spend it building useless shit."

"But without bridges, the ponds have no focal points," Caroline whines. "And it's symbolic of two things coming together, and then I could have two little ponds per table connected by the bridges, which would work better with the 9-foot tables because there's too much dead space in the center and the bridges they have online are all the wrong colors."

"Wait, we're arguing about bridges now?" Stefan stops his search, looking confused.

I snap the drawer closed and open the next one, dropping the pliers out of my other sleeve and holding them up.

"See, I told you that you had them," I inform my brother.

"Sock drawer?" Elena asks me.

"Shirts."

"Damon doesn't want to go on vacation with us!" Caroline complains.

"Where are we going?" Elena asks, and then her eyes light up. "Ooh, we should go to the lake house! It's gorgeous this time of year and I haven't been there in months."

Caroline melts a little bit. "Oh, remember how much fun we used to have up there when we were kids? We were always tipping over the canoe and having to swim back to shore. And remember that one time when my mom thought we'd been targeted by sex predators?"

"Wait, what?" I snap, my satisfaction in my latest prank setup evaporating instantly. "What sex predator?"

"Elena was the sex predator," Caroline tells me with a giggle.

Stefan frowns. "Is that like one of those experimentation things?"

"It's a long story," Elena says, blushing. "It's not important. Anyway, we should go this weekend. The weather's supposed to be nice and Jeremy's going with Matt and Kyle to that car show in Asheville anyway."

"I wanted to design my own swimsuit, so I had Elena cut peek-a-boo designs in most of mine," Caroline tells Stefan. "And my mom thought I was attacked by like, Edward Scissorhands or something."

He smiles. "Elena's not going to win a spot on _Fashion Star _anytime soon, huh? Guess I'd better go with you to the lake house to protect you from pedophiles." He tilts his head at me, then shrugs.

I shake my head. "No. No way I'm going to go play Pin-the-Tail-On-The-Pinetree with you three. Send me a postcard."

"Come on, it'll be fun," Caroline wheedles. "I promise I won't ask you to do the Cosmo quizzes this time."

"_Fun _is what the lake house is for two people. _Boring _is what the lake house is with four people," I point out.

Stefan looks like he agrees with me, but he keeps diplomatically silent. Chickenshit.

"What, you can't go without sex for two days?" Caroline says scornfully. "Nympho."

Stefan's lips twitch and he turns to look out the window.

Caroline catches sight of his quietly shaking shoulders and plops her hands on her hips. "What? What's so funny?"

"We didn't have to soundproof the house because _I _was a nympho," I point out. Elena smacks me in the arm and sighs.

"Oh, didn't we?" Stefan interjects, eyebrows raised.

"I'm just saying, in terms of abstinence, I hold the record in this house." I point out.

"Not any time lately," Elena says dryly.

Caroline's eyes gleam like she's going in for the kill. "Care to put some money on that, Salvatore?"

"You know, I hate to say it, but I'm with my brother on this one," Stefan says, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head fondly at his fiancée. "No offense, honey, but you'd never last two days."

She shoots him a glance that makes me wince. "Oh really?"

"She'd last longer than Damon," Elena says, coming over to stand next to me and giving me a playful bump with her hip.

I smile down at her. "That sounds like a bet to me."

"You better believe it," Caroline agrees. "Boys against girls."

Elena frowns. "Wait, does this go until somebody gives in?"

"I say we start when we go to the lake house this weekend and if everybody makes it until the end of the weekend then we'll re-assess," Caroline says decisively.

"So wait, no physical displays of affection at all?" Stefan asks. "What loses you the bet?"

My brother is smarter than he looks. I give him an approving smile and he winks at me behind Caroline's back.

"I say everything that would count as first base or beyond," Elena says. "And whoever initiates it loses."

"And wins," I add, winking at her.

"So what, are you going to buy us an orphanage when we win?" Stefan asks the girls.

"It can't be money," Caroline decides. "But what should we give the winner?"

"Whatever they want," Elena shrugs. "Within reason."

"You're going to give Damon Salvatore a blank check for whatever he wants from you?" Caroline scoffs. "You've _got_ to be kidding me."

"I'd give him a blank check before I'd give one to you, Caroline Forbes," Elena bristles. "And besides, I have no intention of losing." She lifts her chin and smiles at me, the light of triumph already in her eyes.

I flare my eyes at Caroline, feeling smug, and tug on a lock of Elena's hair. "Cocky much?"

"I'd think twice about giving me a blank check if I were you," Stefan warns lazily.

Caroline snorts. "Like there's anything you want that I'm not already giving you."

"TMI, Care," Elena says, lacing her fingers through mine and tugging me into the hall. "Friday. It's on."

"Thursday," Caroline calls back. "We'll call it a three-day weekend."

"Wait, what day is it?" I ask, suddenly concerned.

"Monday."

I shrug. "Game on. But you girls are going to wish you'd offered to buy us an orphanage." I throw a glance back toward my brother and he nods with the hint of a smile before Elena leads me out of the room.

"You kidnapping me?" I ask her, intrigued. She slants a look at me through her eyelashes.

"You resisting?"

"Staunchly," I tell her, swinging her up into my arms and flashing us to my room. She kicks the door shut and wriggles out of my arms, and before I can say 'blank check,' she's got me backed up against the door with no shirt on.

"Ah, this is a ravishing kind of kidnapping," I grin. "My favorite."

She traces the line of my throat with the tip of her tongue, which divides my attention neatly between hoping she's thirsty and wondering why I'm such a masochist that I haven't yet replaced all my pants with the painless button fly models.

Elena growls and shoves me across the room and down onto my bed, pinning my hands above my head and flashing me a threatening glimpse of her fangs. Spots dance before my eyes for a second as all the blood in my body heads abruptly south and then she grins and narrows her eyes playfully at me.

"I just want to know one thing, Salvatore."

"Identity of the shooter on the grassy knoll?" I ask, rolling my hips up against her so I can watch her eyelashes flutter.

"What you planted when you were pretending to look for pliers."

I chuckle. "Sharp eye, grasshopper."

She's still got a firm hold on my wrists, but I raise my head and nuzzle underneath the hem of her shirt, worrying the top edge of her jeans with my teeth. She giggles and presses closer and I reward her with a touch of tongue. She gasps and her hands loosen, but I'm not interested in getting free.

"Promise to keep my secrets?"

"Mmm, conflict of interest," she mutters. I set my teeth in denim and open the button of her jeans with a practiced turn of my head, tugging firmly until the zipper separates and I can breath a kiss against the bow at the top of her panties.

"You're supposed to be on my side," I whisper to the bow.

"Aahhhhungh," the bow groans back.

I smile and bite it. Carefully, so I don't tear it off, but hard enough that my teeth scrape Elena's belly. "Can I trust you?" I murmur.

"Mmm hmm," she says, nodding vigorously enough that I can feel the movement all through her body.

"Powdered adhesive on the ass of all Caroline's panties."

Elena gasps, then giggles. "So that's why you wanted to know what day it was. How long until the glue wears off? We're never going to win the bet if you basically glued her into a chastity belt."

I nip the bottom edge of her belly button. "Eighteen hours. We'll be good to go by Thursday, if she hasn't glued my dick to the chopping block by then."

She abandons my wrists to let her hands roam over my chest and I relax back into the bed, my skin humming happily everywhere she touches me.

"So what are you going to ask for if you win?" she asks, peeking impishly up at me while she unbuckles my belt.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" I tease, tucking my hands behind my head so I have a better view of the way her chocolate-colored hair pools across my belly. "What are you going to ask for?"

She prowls back up to my lips and steals a kiss.

"You have to be my sex slave," she purrs into my mouth. "For a full month."

I groan and roll her underneath me, my hands slipping under the edges of her unfastened jeans to taste the curves of her hips.

"Woman, you play dirty."

She licks her lips and gives me a smile that promises things I don't even have names for. "You better believe it."

* * *

_Author's Note: Anybody want to leave a guess as to who loses the bet?_


	11. The Smell of A Good Girlfriend

**Chapter 11: The Smell of A Good Girlfriend**

**ELENA POV**

"Wait, stop!" I exclaim, gripping the door handle of the Camaro as Damon turns onto the long driveway leading up to the lake house.

Damon gives me a thoroughly masculine look of smugness from underneath long eyelashes. He doesn't say a thing, the joke is so implied.

I blush. "No, I mean it this time."

He shakes his head, pursing his lips in feigned regret as he takes his foot slowly off the brake. "Too late, sweetheart. We're already over the property boundary."

"No we aren't!" I blurt, bracing my hand against the glove box as if I can slow the car that way. "The driveway is just a access easement. The property line doesn't pick up until you're about fifty yards in front of the house."

Damon gives me a regretful look. "I'm only one man, Elena, and it's been a long…drive. I'm afraid it's time to face the music."

I drop my eyes to his lap and he shifts uncomfortably. "Only one man, huh?" I ask with a smile. "Not a particularly tired man though, it looks like."

His gaze flicks to my lips for a fraction of a second before he pretends to be checking the side mirror.

I slide my hand up the steering wheel, playing with his fingers as I drop my head onto his shoulder and sigh. The car is barely coasting, Damon's foot nowhere near the gas pedal.

"I'll just miss you, that's all. I guess it doesn't bother you as much as it does me."

"Elena, we just made a two-hour drive take five hours. I think my feelings about you and your deviously flexible body have been fully explored."

I peek up at him, dropping my hand from the steering wheel so it can rest on his chest, my fingertips slipping between the buttons of his shirt to test the smooth skin of his chest beneath. The scratches I put there have already healed and I licked all the blood clean, so no trace remains of the last naughty little play session we had on the way here.

I was just toying with my daylight ring and watching him through my eyelashes when he pulled over. When I looked up to see why we stopped, all I saw was a dark building with a sign on the door advertising kids gymnastics and trampoline classes.

Damon bobbed his eyebrows at me with an R-rated smirk. "A little extra bounce never hurt anything."

"It's closed," I had protested. He just picked me up and started whispering possibilities in my ear and I didn't even hear the snap when he broke the lock.

Now, his breathing deepens at the look in my eye and I trace the buttons on his shirt. I bite my bottom lip and think about the beautiful world of bondage and pommel horses until I feel my canines sharpen, releasing just a trace of blood. Damon has a more sensitive nose than any vampire I've ever met and I bet this will be enough to tempt him into letting me start out the chastity bet fully satisfied.

Damon stops the car just short of the property boundary marker and gives me a look that makes me think of black, shredded lace and the fact that I need to get a new pair of panties out of my suitcase before I see Caroline and Stefan.

"You know, it's just a bet," he says, his voice a rumble that hits me way down low. "You could lose."

I open the first button on his shirt and nip at his bottom lip, my gums tingling with the strange rush that tells me I'm about to draw blood.

"You could lose_ and_ win," I purr.

He wraps an arm around my waist and hauls me across the gearshift so I'm laying half in his lap. His thumb presses against my jaw, roughly opening my mouth for him and I moan against his teeth.

He's just flicked open the button on my jeans when a siren pops on in the distance and I flinch.

The wail of an ambulance always hits me straight in the chest. I was unconscious when Stefan pulled me out of my family's car and surrendered me to the paramedics but I woke up halfway to the hospital. The scream of the siren was my only companion in that first, lonely moment when I knew my parents were the permanent kind of gone.

I close my eyes and tell myself that a siren means that someone who needs it is getting help. It's a good sound. Really.

"Elena?" Damon abandons the button and his hand settles softly into the curve of my waist, as if he can sense my moods simply through the warmth of his palm on my skin.

"I'm okay," I reassure him, taking a discrete breath close to his neck. Damon's skin smells like bedtime to me, warm and dark with just a hint of sex.

They'll never take him away in an ambulance. He'll never get old or sick and he could live through any number of car accidents.

I never want to hear a siren in a world without Damon in it.

I pull away, letting my hair fall like a curtain between us as I scoot back into my seat.

"You were right," I tell him, trying to keep my voice steady as I blink back the tears that are spilling into my eyelashes. "We're late. Stefan and Caroline are probably wondering what happened to us."

"Stefan and Caroline probably broke the coffee table celebrating our incredibly slow driving," he says dryly.

My breath catches on a watery giggle.

Damon rests a wrist on top of the steering wheel and stretches his other arm casually across the back of my seat, toying with a lock of my hair.

"Want me to sing One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall?" he offers.

I look up at the ceiling of the car, willing the lump in my throat to recede.

"One hundred," Damon sings, in his best throaty Marilyn Monroe impression, "little bottles—"

I choke on my laughter and the tears blocking my breathing.

"Naughty little bottles," he embellishes. "Mr. Pres-i-dent…"

I give up and wipe at my eyes with my sleeve, "Oh my gosh, stop, or I swear I'll really cry."

"Come on, you know it turned you on," he says. "I do a mean Marilyn."

"Love to see you pop out of a cake," I tell him, slanting him a wobbly smile. "Sorry. It's been a while since my emotions got all vampire-y on me."

"Caroline says ice cream fixes hers," he says mildly, taking his foot off the brake. "Let's go sweeten you up."

"We probably don't have any ice cream up here unless Jeremy left it last time, and then it'll be all icy. Did you remember to get the chocolate for the s'mores Caroline wanted?"

"_Fuck _no," Damon says emphatically. "Do I look like a twelve-year old girl with a tie and 12 pieces of flair?"

"You don't have to be a girl scout to like s'mores," I protest. "And they earn fabric badges, not buttons."

"Yeah, well I'm still not wasting good chocolate by melting glop on top of it."

He parks in front of the garage, which is packed full of boats and worn out hammocks and Jeremy's old sports equipment. "Looks like the coffee table is safe."

I frown at the empty parking space next to ours. "They're totally cheating. The bet was supposed to start when we arrived."

Damon grins. "Don't get mad, get even. I've never liked that damn coffee table anyway."

I smile at him as we climb the porch steps together, the last of my tears gone as if they never existed. The mood swings still catch me off guard, but they don't seem to faze Damon.

He slings an arm around my shoulder as I unlock the door. "Sure you don't want that ice cream? We can head back to town."

"No," I tell him, winking. "I hate the coffee table too."

He steps inside and takes a breath to reply, but then all the humor drops out of his face.

The colors of the room around me blur together as Damon's arm locks around my waist and he yanks me out of the house and all the way back to the Camaro.

Before I can start to sort out what just happened, a little blue car slams to a stop behind ours and Stefan's beside us in half a breath.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

"Someone's been staying in the house," Damon says. "Maybe even just a human squatter or something, but I doubt we'd get that lucky. Stay here with Elena while I check it out."

I cross my arms. "Are you serious, Damon? My stomach is somewhere up around my ears right now because you're afraid I can't take a vagrant in a fair fight?" I roll my eyes. "Unbelievable."

Caroline joins us, looking concerned. "What do you mean someone's been staying here?"

"It's too clean," Damon explains, keeping his body between me and the still-open door of the lake house. "It's a vacation home. It should smell a little dusty from being closed up, even if you cleaned before you left."

Caroline's eyes sparkle as she trades a smile with me. "I think," she says, tapping her lips with a finger as she pretends to consider, "that that might be the smell of a good girlfriend."

Damon frowns, his eyes cutting back toward the house. "What?"

"What she means is that it smells clean because it is clean," I tell him, laughing. "I came up yesterday and did it because I knew you'd never do any housekeeping while we were all awake and so you'd just be twitchy and grouchy all day until we went to bed and you could dust."

He looks annoyed. "I do not get _grouchy _about dusting."

"Oh you mean that dart-y eye thing that you _don't_ do when the living room is messy?" Stefan asks, pursing his lips to hide his smile. "The thing that _doesn't _make you look like a drug addict?"

"Like the sit-on-your-ass thing _you_ do when the living room's dirty?" Damon asks, turning his back on his brother to get our bags out of the trunk of the Camaro.

Stefan rolls his eyes at me and I laugh, following Damon inside to the room I've stayed in since I was a kid. The master bedroom is bigger, but I let Stefan and Caroline take it. If I slept in the master bedroom, it would be too much of a reminder that my parents aren't just missing this one trip. They're missing all of them.

Damon drops the suitcases on the floor of the small closet and turns, quirking an eyebrow at me.

"Did you really?" he asks in a low voice. "Drive four hours round trip to just clean the house?"

I shrug one shoulder. "You already do way more than your share of the chores, Damon. I figured this was the best way to beat you to it."

His face is flashing through expressions too fast, the way it does when he's not sure how to respond. Usually, if I wait for him to decide, he picks the worst option.

Instead of waiting, I wrap my arms around his waist, tuck my head under his chin and squeeze, so he knows he doesn't have to say anything at all.

He buries his face in my hair. "What the hell are you doing with the likes of me?" he growls.

I just smile. "You're welcome."

I only allow myself one more, too-short minute and then I push him away. "Now get your paws off of me before we have to talk about you forfeiting that bet."

"I'm thinking about giving up gambling," he announces, his eyes dark. "It's a sin."

"So is fornication," I remind him.

He waggles his eyebrows. "Elena, what are you suggesting?"

"Not a thing," I say, reaching back and opening the hall door. "Maybe it would be better to have a little less privacy right now."

"Spoil sport," he says, but as soon as he turns toward the bed the smile drops off his face. "What. The. Fuck."

I follow his gaze.

To the unicorn that is tucked neatly into our bed, covers pulled up to its chin as it stares at us with innocently accusing eyes.

"I think it heard me say fornication," I whisper.

"Elena," Damon says dangerously, not taking his eyes off the unicorn. "Tell me you did not put that thing in our bed."

I cross my arms. "Didn't you glue it to Caroline's bedpost?"

"With epoxy," he confirms.

"Did you ever see that movie where the teenage girl keeps trying to get rid of the Ouijia board, but no matter what she does, it keeps appearing back in her closet, unharmed?" I ask, struggling to keep a straight face.

Damon gives me a hard look. "Did you by any chance have some company yesterday when you were playing Santa's little elf? Maybe a blonde elf with an odd shaped tail and a couple extra points on her head, who happened to be glued into a pair of permanent panties?"

I bite my lip guiltily.

Caroline sashays into the room and snatches up her unicorn with a glare at my boyfriend. "No fair borrowing my stuffed animals without asking, Damon."

I can't resist the look on his face, so against my better judgment, I chime in, "Did I forget to pack your Mr. Snuggles? Oh, I'm sorry, honey."

Damon's head turns very slowly toward me, but before I can register his expression, I take my cue from Caroline and start running when she does.

She manages to get the front door open before we plow through it, no doubt a move she's perfected, having survived many of these pursuits. I only have a fraction of a second to register Stefan's confused expression as the three of us tumble out the door and explode into the forest in a blurring chase punctuated by laughter, shrieking near-captures, and Damon's dire promises of plush unicorn dismemberment.

For a moment, it feels just like it did when Jeremy and I used to play tag in these woods, back before there were vampires and witches and curses. Just family and trees and the breathless thrill of a hard run, without a hint of a siren in the crisp air.

* * *

_Author's Note: Super quick update after this one, folks, since it was a short chapter. Cross your fingers my cranky internet hotspot cooperates: I'm camping a good two hour drive from any good WiFi, but since we're on top of a mountain I can get enough signal to upload if I hop on one foot and thread a wire hanger through my ear canals. Which of course I only do because I'm so addicted to all your lovely reviews. _


	12. The Test of Time

**Chapter 12: The Test of Time**

**DAMON POV**

My eyes register only shades of blue gently sifted together, the breeze from the open window touching my hair with kind fingers. It brushes my eyelashes and I remember to blink; the lake comes back into focus, framed by the rough-hewn logs of the kitchen windowsill.

For a young building, Elena's lake house feels surprisingly timeless. But in a good way, like if you let the days of your life spool out here, they would rest quietly without the hint of an echo.

There's someone at the edge of the dock, wide shoulders hunched beneath the thin grey cotton of his hoodie. I move away from the window, leaving my brother to whatever he sees in the water and the sky of this place. I wonder if he's losing track of time too, the tick of each minute fading into the background until the hum is like a slow exhale that you don't even hear anymore.

I'm supposed to be baking. I'm supposed to be seducing Elena, so that Stef and I can have the best fucking fundraiser Mystic Falls has ever seen. And I'm never going to get my blank check if I'm busy getting all moony-eyed at the scenery.

I pick up my rolling pin and dust flour across the ball of dough I'm rolling out, a beautiful trap that will bake into buttery, flaky layers that remind me of why I still bother to eat.

From my spot at the counter I can see the girls, curled into the hammock together like sleepy kittens. Their voices ebb and flow in a languid, irregular rhythm as they murmur back and forth, resting in the pauses before they remember to pick up the conversation again.

I'm focusing more on my pastry than their words until Elena's voice catches my attention.

"I just wish we had more in common. This is the last year, you know? He'll move somewhere and so will I and after this it will just be catching up on the phone and visits." Her head is tilted down so I can't see her face, but her fingers are picking anxiously at the fabric of the hammock. "Once we're not living so close together, what will we even have to say? He's not really a talker anyway."

I lift my chin so I can peek through the sliding glass door. I wish she'd stop worrying so much about her brother. When we went to visit colleges she spent the whole time cycling between awkwardly feigned enthusiasm and dejection while Jeremy shot me pained looks and I wished I was in a dark, quiet bar where no one talked about GGRs or GPAs or RAs or STDs.

The only part that didn't leave me wishing I was knee-deep in bourbon was the end of the last campus tour. Elena was fussing about different meal plans and I silently tossed Jeremy my phone, opened to a search window for bachelors degree certificates in every conceivable field of study for $39.99 plus shipping.

He laughed, Elena glared, and I told him he should just stay home and get athletes foot and herpes for free. Which was not, I might add, an interpretation of the higher education experience that my girlfriend appeared to appreciate me passing on to her younger sibling.

"It's not like you're strangers, Elena," Caroline points out. "You and Jeremy have a way better relationship than most people have with their little brothers. Besides, he's seventeen. What does he even do, outside of X-box and looking at the same five sticky Playboys?" She shudders theatrically. "Just…ew, Elena. Wait until he grows into a hobby or two before you worry that you guys don't have anything in common."

Elena swats half-heartedly at her friend's feet.

"I just don't want to be like that lame aunt that you have to visit twice a year whether you like it or not. I want us to…" she sighs. "Have fun together. Hang out when somebody's not trying to kill us."

"You're not lame, Elena," Caroline says firmly. "But he's a boy. They do, you know, boy stuff. He and Damon work on cars and hunt vampires together and all. I bet they'll still do that when he's in college. Jeremy's not going to be a twice-a-year visit kind of brother, ever."

"I know he likes _Damon_," Elena whispers sullenly. "I guess if he comes to visit my boyfriend that'll have to be enough."

I turn away from the window to hide my smile. It's too rich, the girl that everyone loves best pouting because her brother and I occasionally pull a long weekend of fanged-douchebag cleanup together.

I can hear the creak of thick, weather-beaten boards as Stefan comes back down the dock. He doesn't come in the back door to join me, so he must have heard the girls on the porch.

He props a shoulder against the frame of the sliding glass doors and his eyes smile even though his face stays solemn.

I pour a bowl of cherries into a colander and run water over them, keeping an eye on my family while I do it. Caroline does a decent job of keeping the other two out of the razorblades but the Jeremy thing has been bothering Elena all year. I think the empty-nesting has her thinking about all the kids she won't have and that's something we can't distract her from. Especially since I suspect Caroline has the same problem.

"Elena thinks Jeremy is going to ditch her once he leaves for college because they have nothing in common," Caroline informs her fiancée. "Tell her she's being crazy."

"Wow, way to keep a secret, Care," Elena protests.

"It's not about having the same interests, Elena," Stefan says quietly, one shoulder lifting in a shrug. "Hobbies get old and go out of style. He's your family. He shares your memories. He knew you before anyone else did and he'll forgive you when no one else will."

I turn my back on the patio door and start checking cabinets for a bin of sugar, glad I'm skipping out on this painfully ironic little bonding session. Stefan giving Elena lessons on the importance of family? Guess somebody forget all the decades of the silent treatment we gave each other. In between me making his life a living hell and him blaming me for his killing sprees, of course.

_Guess I just needed my brother_, he'd told me once. To what? Come around every few decades and share a drink or two that invariably degenerated into a bar fight? To stalk his misguided military service? To kill off a coven of tomb vampires who were torturing him? Or, I know, maybe to tell him he was dating the wrong person and then demonstrate the point by stealing his girlfriend?

Maybe he's forgotten that we've always been there for each other, but not necessarily in the best way.

"When you live as long as we do, that is what's important," Stefan tells Elena.

"Oh, Stefan," she says softly.

There's a creak from the hammock, which means there's probably lots of hugging and Kumbaya'ing going on out there on the porch. I hear the hint of a quick sniffle, which was likely from Blonde and Bossy, and I have to stifle a curse. I'm gonna kiss my blank check goodbye forever if she starts bawling about the horrors of being an only child and Stefan has to spend all weekend comforting her.

As if she wouldn't have dug a shallow grave for any clothes-snatching sister she might have had.

I give Stefan an extra minute to get his hands off my girl before I turn around and catch his eye through the glass. He just regards me quietly, even though he damn well knows I heard every word of that.

Want to be a good brother? Get the hell to work then, why don't you?

I nod pointedly at the hammock and flare my eyes at him. His face softens into the ghost of a knowing smile.

"I think Damon's calling you," he tells Elena.

Her dark head pops up over the edge of the hammock and I busy myself bringing a cutting board to the table.

"Sorry, I didn't hear," she tells him, rolling out of the hammock and letting herself inside.

Behind her, Stefan offers his hand to Caroline and pulls her to her feet. He steers her back up the dock and there's no sound of sniffling whatsoever.

Much better.

"Hey," Elena says, closing the door behind her. "What's up?"

"Time to start earning your keep, Gilbert," I tell her, crossing my arms over my chest. "Fun time's over."

She smiles and steps close to me, trailing a finger down my chest. "Is this another version of the Elena relay?"

I raise an eyebrow, which is about all the communication I'm capable of when her finger sneaks inside my shirt and rests on top of the button of my jeans.

"You know, when Stefan and Caroline say all the right things and then you take over and distract me until I forget all about what I was worried about in the first place?"

I step close enough that her breasts brush my chest and I can feel that she's wearing a lacy bra today instead of one of the satin ones.

"As always," I duck my head and breathe the words over her lips. "You give me way too much credit." I smooth my bottom lip against hers, feeling her breath flutter against the tiny hairs of the five o'clock shadow that I'm letting grow.

She melts a little bit against my chest, and I swallow and turn her toward the table before I forget all about blank checks and wicked brilliant fundraising ideas.

"This is all about me and Caroline not getting stuck doing all the cooking for the next century or so." I pull out a chair at the table in front of the cutting board and she drops into it with a tolerant smile.

"Okay, what would you like me to do?"

"Pit cherries."

She looks suspicious.

I smile. "It's the beginners level baking class."

"What are you going to do?"

"Be moral support," I tell her, sliding my hands over her shoulders and squeezing the muscles there. A weekend at the lake house should leave her lazy and supple, but her neck and shoulders are as tightly strung as always. I dig my thumbs in, slowly working out the knots for her.

She gives a happy little sigh. "I hope you need a lot of cherries pitted. 'Cause I think I need a lot of moral support."

"Oh, I do," I tell her, working my way up the smooth column of her neck. "About half a truckload of them."

I'll make ten pies if I have to. It's a ploy, of course. Cherries are a very delicate fruit and to do it right, she'll have to focus all her awareness into her skin, which will make her sensitive all over. Which can only help in getting her to seduce me into losing our bet.

She picks up a paring knife and makes a slit all the way around a cherry and then pulls it apart to take out the pit, leaving nothing but deep red mush.

I make a horrified sound. "It's not a smoothy, Elena. What are you doing?"

She cranes her head back to look at me. "If I do it wrong, do I lose shoulder rub privileges?"

"Absolutely," I tell her sternly and her face falls. "You've got to go easy on them, they're fragile."

She turns around and butchers three more cherries with great concentration while I smirk and pretend to be surprised.

"Look, do you remember when I taught you to use your hearing? It's like that. Focus on your fingertips. If you try, you can sense the skin of each cherry, the exact resistance of the fruit." I bend down and drop my voice so it whispers against her ear. I can hear her breathing change, and I hold back a smile. "Now hold it very, very gently and twist so it disengages from the pit."

She tries it, and this time she ends up with two neat halves of a cherry.

"Good," I tell her, brushing my thumb down the nape of her neck and watching gooseflesh appear in my wake. I catch a hint of vanilla on the air as her skin warms and the denim of my jeans suddenly feels scratchy and harsh.

"It's the way I used to touch you when you were human," I tell her quietly. "Just a moment of inattention and you'd break."

She keeps working obediently on the cherries but her fingers have just the hint of a tremor to them now. This bet isn't really fair at all. I have been calibrating my voice and touch to every hitch in her breathing and leap of her heart for as long as I've known her. I could see my effect on her and I've always used the hell out of it.

I had to, because it let me feel smug instead of empty every time she glared at me or slammed a door in my face. Because I knew all I'd have to do was stand a little too close and listen to her heart make a liar out of her.

Her body loved me long before Elena did.

It used to hurt, her reaction to me. I'd get a bittersweet squeeze in the base of my throat when her eyes would dilate and go to my lips before she glanced away, crossing her arms over her chest to hide the peaks of her nipples. Sometimes, I thought it might be worse than simple rejection, because I knew the parts of me she wanted had everything to do with pretty genes and nothing at all to do with me.

Now, I nuzzle my hands into her hair and let the heavy strands slowly pour through my fingers. Elena shivers and her paring knife goes still, so I do it again, lifting her hair and letting it stroke my skin as it falls back into place.

She tilts her head back so it rests against my stomach and smiles up at me, brown eyes sleepy and pleased.

"That feels good."

I can smell the promise of her arousal, can see the slow blood rising to the surface of her pale skin that tells me if I bent to her lips at this second she would forfeit that bet without hesitation. And I smile with just a hint of triumph, because all my old tricks still work, but now it doesn't hurt at all. Now when her eyes find me, they linger and warm and it soothes away that tight spot in my throat as if it never existed.

"Yeah," I agree. "It feels amazing."

* * *

_Author's Note: If you are enjoying the story, you might be interested to know I have a book out. It's a love story, and a survival story, with a male lead who will definitely appeal to fans of Damon. Check it out on my website at michellehazenbooks dot com_


	13. Hope Floats

_Author's Note: This chapter is a lot funnier if you've watched the Princess Bride a couple dozen times. And if you haven't, how do you even live with yourself? I'm only going to have internet for a day here and there this month, as I'll be far out in the backcountry. Just often enough to post, but I may not get much of a chance to respond to reviews. But whether I get to respond or not, please know I treasure, giggle over and grin un-dignifiedly at each and every one._

* * *

**Chapter 13: Hope Floats**

**DAMON POV**

I lean back in my chair and kick my feet up on the rails of the porch. This lake house thing isn't so bad. Once I figure out a way to soundproof log walls, we'll be in business. It doesn't have the open-air charm of my villa in Italy, but Cinque Terre has gotten busy in the last 50 years and even with my private stretch of beach, the air isn't as un-laden of sound as it once was.

I love that place. The tiny vineyard that produces grapes that are just a hint too bitter to sell to the vintners, but that I've acquired a very specific taste for over the years. The raised marble tub that looks out onto the second floor balcony, with a view of the ocean filtered through the flowering vines that drape the terrace. It's exactly to my taste, and no one but Elena and the caretakers have ever been in the place and gotten to keep the memory.

Still it might be time to sell the villa, trade it in on something less crowded. Maybe buy an island, like all the stars do. Given the rash of box-office crashes lately, it seems like there ought to be a foreclosure on an island somewhere in the world where the sun still glitters on gin-clear water and all that washes up on shore are coconut husks and the scraps of whatever bathing suit Elena tried to wear.

The door closes and bare footsteps whisper across the wide planks of the deck. I don't look up and my brother doesn't speak, looking out across the lake with me. He doesn't own property anywhere but Chicago, that anachronistic gravestone of an apartment, and I wonder what other lakes and oceans he sees in this view.

Ric would have loved an island. He'd have examined every inch of it like Dora the fucking Explorer, taking pictures of all the weird bugs and animals he could find. When it got dark, he'd have gotten out a grin and a chainsaw and helped me pile up a bonfire on the beach. We'd have passed out in the sand and I'd have dragged his snoring ass up onto the dry sand when the tide came in, because he sleeps like a corpse when he's drunk.

"Tell me again how an activity that involves the girls wearing _less _clothes is going to help us win this bet?" Stefan asks, his sardonic voice dropping like lead into my vision of salt-blue flames dancing along driftwood.

I shoot him a sidelong glance and finish my beer. "I admit it sounded like a lot better plan before you showed up in plaid. For fuck's sake, Stefan, are you swimming or hunting elk?"

"I don't usually wear swim trunks," he says defensively. "These were the only ones I had."

"And what the hell were all those Youtube videos of kittens earlier? Are you trying to scare your balls into sounding a full retreat?"

He grins at me. "Never you mind, brother. Just give me room to work, and we'll have this bet behind us by nightfall. I've got page 6 of the New York Post queued up to read aloud to her tonight and if that doesn't work, I got my hands on an old DVD of Home Improvement, though I'm not even sure I want to know why _that_ turns her on. If by some miracle none of that does the trick, I'm saving all the dirty stuff for Sunday."

I shake my head. "That girl is _freaky_, man. Good luck with that."

"You have no idea," he says confidently, smiling out at the water.

I tip my empty beer bottle in his direction, conceding the point. She was enthusiastic but fairly vanilla when I was with her. She didn't even get off on the biting, like most girls do. Something tells me that is _not_ the case now.

I shake the thought off like a bad smell and stand up.

"Help me put those canoes in the water?"

He nods, flipping a towel over his shoulder. "You know, you don't have to just sit back and wait for me to win. You could do your part, take one for the team." He tips his head, shrugging casually. "I mean, I know you've been off the market for a while now, you're probably losing your touch."

He hefts one of the canoes off the rack and gives me a straight-faced look of concern. "I could give you some pointers, if you want."

I smirk and snatch his towel off his shoulder, snapping it at his bare belly. "Stefan, with looks like these, you don't even need to bother flirting. Her 20/20 does all the work for me."

He grunts at the snap of the towel and carries his canoe toward the water, fumbling with something stuffed into the pocket of his giant swim trunks. "Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night, lazy ass."

"You keep up with that attitude, young man, and I'm not even going to tell you the brilliant idea I came up with for spending our blank checks."

Stefan cocks an eyebrow at me, but then the girls come sauntering down the docks, giggling about something or other. Elena's wearing a lipstick-red bikini that could easily double as dental floss, and a big floppy hat with the ugliest fake flower between here and Iceland fastened to the front of it.

She peeks out from under the shaded brim and gives me a shy smile.

I smile back, letting her watch while I drink her in. I bend my head intimately toward her and skim my hand across the small of her back.

"Your boat, Miss Gilbert?" I offer, smoothly turning her toward our canoe.

She blushes and her eyelashes sweep down.

I harden immediately, the blood rising to Elena's cheeks making all mine head directly south. Blushing means she's thinking about something deliciously naughty and I am highly interested in whatever that might be.

I turn my back on my brother and brush a kiss across her shoulder, testing her smooth skin with just a hint of teeth.

Caroline swats me on the shoulder. "Keep your tongue in your mouth, Romeo. There's no way I'm letting you turn Elena all cross-eyed and bet-losing just because you took your shirt off and remembered your manners for the first time this century."

Elena clears her throat and shifts her weight as if testing her balance. I turn my head and give Caroline a look with eyes that are filling with a crimson warning. She glares and Stefan steps into my line of vision wearing his two-crease Disapproving Papa face.

"Shall we go?" Elena says in a voice that's half an octave too high to pass for casual.

"As you wish," I murmur, because I know she loves that damn movie and I'm not above cheating a little to get what I want.

Caroline groans. "Cheap, Salvatore. Don't you _even _bring Westley into this."

"'Death cannot stop true love,'" Stefan quotes softly. "'It can only delay it a little while.'"

Caroline's eyes go soft, and she bites her lip. "Okay, _you_ make a good Westley, though," she admits.

I have to stop breathing and hold my chest very, very still to keep from laughing. My brother is all too well-suited for this bet. But if he's going to be sappy, he might as well be sappy with a purpose. Otherwise it's just not worth putting up with that shit.

I turn away to hide my smile and that's when I see it.

That fucking unicorn. Safely strapped to the center bar on the canoe, facing pertly forward as if it wants to take in the view.

"What. The. Fuck." I grit out from between teeth that won't unclench.

I take a breath and try to remember how pissed Elena will be if I forcibly re-route the circulatory system of her best-undead-friend.

"Listen up, Clairol. You are three strikes past your limit on taunting me with My Little Emasculating Pony. If you don't want to have to beg Bonnie to re-animate the ashes of its cottony little corpse, you will take it out of my sight. Please, thank you, and get-a-fucking-move-on."

"Damon," Elena says, laying a soft hand on my arm.

Caroline just laughs. "I'm a natural blonde, Damon, so don't even. And it wasn't me." She's beaming at my brother. "Stefan, did you do that?"

He shrugs and glances at his feet, looking nerdy as fuck with a self-deprecating little smile and those optically assaultive plaid shorts. "Uni wanted to come on a boatride, too. He doesn't get out much."

In the interest of bet-winning and my incredible idea for what to do with the spoils of victory, I try to choke back the bile that rises to my throat, and the knee-jerk declaiming of any family relationship between the two of us.

Caroline gives Stefan a look that raises the temperature on the dock by about 10 degrees. Celsius.

I distract myself by fantasizing about Elena's blank check and the Jell-O wrestling fundraiser that she and Caroline are going to agree to star in as a result.

Caroline bends down and starts cooing at the unicorn at a pitch that makes my balls shrivel, and not even my vivid imagination can keep my tongue in check.

"You know Stef, Freud might shudder at the extent of your mommy issues, but he'd fully approve your choice of get-laid gifts. A squishy little horse to soften her up, with a phallic symbol growing out of its head as a handy reminder of the end game scenario." I give a low whistle between my teeth. "Full points for effort, brother."

Stefan reddens angrily but before the committee returns the Brow Crease rating of my latest witticism, Caroline's fist hits me with the force of a soccer-mom-mobile with a V8 upgrade to the engine.

Normally I double-check my footing before I piss off my future sister-in-law, but I forgot to brace myself this time and I'm 60% of the way to a personal introduction with the nearest body of water when Elena catches my arm and hauls me back onto the dock.

I blink at her in surprise as she steadies me before she gives a pressed-lip shake of her head to Caroline.

"Behave yourself," she admonishes her friend. "I want to go boating and I'm never going to get to do that with you and Damon trying to drown each other the whole time."

I turn back to my girlfriend and salve my irritation with the sparkle in her dark eyes, shaded by the floppy brim of her perfectly awful hat. I smile despite myself.

"Ready?"

She nods eagerly, as if I'm about to put her in a yacht instead of an old fiberglass canoe. No wonder she always gets exactly what she wants. A smile like that could start bidding wars at a klepto convention.

I take a knee so I can stabilize the non-unicorn-bearing canoe for her to climb onboard.

She giggles. "Really, Damon? You know I have supernaturally good balance now, right?"

"Canoes can't be trusted," I tell her. "And there is a shortage of perfect breasts in the world. It would be a shame to damage yours."

Caroline snorts. "She'd just fall in the water. I think her breasts would probably survive."

"That's his favorite _Princess Bride_ quote," Stefan explains. "He'd work it into a conversation with his tax accountant if he could."

The canoe wobbles as Elena takes a seat, and I refrain from pointing out the flaws in her supernatural balance.

Elena grimaces. "Tell me you haven't used that as a pick up line."

"Baby," I deadpan. "When you have a body like this, you don't need to say a word."

"And yet you rarely shut up," Caroline says dryly.

"Pull in the claws," I warn her. "You were the one that wanted a family vacation."

"Ugh, don't remind me," she complains. Stefan chuckles, unfazed by the glare it nets him.

Caroline turns back to me and raises an eyebrow that's half-challenge, half-apology.

"You killed my father," she quotes in an atrocious Spanish accent. "Prepare to die."

"Hey!" I raise my hands in protest. "I only _almost _killed your father."

Elena laughs. "This is so not a normal family vacation."

I push off the dock, determined to put some distance between me and that demonic unicorn. I paddle for a few minutes, propelling us further out into the mirror-smooth water of the lake.

"What's the point of this again?" I ask Elena. "You just paddle the boat around in circles, looking at the same shit you can see from the dock?"

"It's romantic," she tells me, having already abandoned her share of the paddling in favor of lounging in the bottom of the boat, watching me with a languid smile and appreciative eyes. I paddle a little harder, just to give her a good show.

"Like in _The Notebook_," Caroline says, her and Stefan's boat coming up alongside ours.

"You wrote in a notebook about how romantic canoeing is?" I ask, confused. Last I checked, Elena's diary was more of a leather-bound book affair.

"It's a movie," Stefan tells me. "There's a scene where the couple goes boating but mostly it's about a girl who leaves the nice boy her family likes for a guy she's attracted to, even though heartbreak has turned him into a bitter alcoholic and they have nothing in common." He tilts his head at me with a purposefully bland expression. "Right up your alley. You should give it a try."

Very funny, dickhead.

"I'll leave the soggy Kleenex movies for you, Oprah," I tell my brother.

"Oh Damon, you should come to our movie nights sometime," Elena says excitedly, oblivious to Stefan's jab, as usual. "Come on, I'll let you make fun of all the actors!"

I shake my head. "Sorry, no can do. I have pressing business to attend to. Murder, mayhem, misogyny. You know, the usual."

Stefan shakes his head with feigned sadness. "You know, Damon, if your man card restricts access to movie night, I guess that will only leave me to cuddle with all the beautiful women in the house." He sighs. "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, after all."

"Yeah," I agree, refusing to take the bait. "You and Kyle have always had a knack for befriending the ladies. One of these days you two will have to let me in on your ah…little secret." I flare my eyes suggestively.

Stefan sets aside his paddle and stands up, balancing carefully in the small craft.

"Stefan Salvatore!" Caroline warns. "If you tip this boat over and get my hair wet, so help me God you are sleeping in this canoe tonight."

I grin. "Yeah, Stefan, you—" I don't even get to finish my sentence before he launches out of the canoe with a precision that doesn't ruffle a hair on Caroline's blonde head.

When he hits me, my canoe rolls bottom to the sky and Elena's shriek is swallowed mid-note by the placid water of the lake as all three of us go under.

* * *

**ELENA POV**

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Men.

Men in general and Damon Salvatore in particular, with Stefan running a close second, are on my shit list. Or my drown-before-lunch list. My boyfriend can't go five minutes without taunting Caroline or roughhousing with his brother and if I didn't know that both those things are his version of a grin I swear I would wring his perfectly gorgeous neck.

As I break the surface again, I gasp for air and shriek a protest at the temperature of the water, giving my bikini top a hasty tug to get it back to covering all the important items. Stefan surfaces about ten feet away and gives me a sheepish grin.

"Sorry Elena."

Before I can say something I may or may not regret later, Damon's head pops up in between us and he spits a fountain of water right in Stefan's face before stuffing him down below the surface again.

Damon looks back at me and raises an eyebrow.

"You okay?"

"I hate you," I inform him.

He grins, and then his eyes light on Caroline, sitting alone in her canoe.

"_Not_ if you want to have enough fingers left to count your brain cells," she says scathingly.

A wave erupts behind him as he strikes out with powerful strokes for her boat. She raises her canoe paddle in warning and he ducks just in time to avoid a blow that would have landed a human in the hospital.

"Caroline, stop it!" I shout as I start swimming toward them. I can hear the sound of Stefan coming up behind me.

"In case of a crash," Damon intones. "Your seat may not be used as a flotation device."

With one firm yank, he overturns Caroline's canoe. She jumps into the air as it flips, landing impossibly on the underside of the boat. She staggers once and nearly goes in before she plants her feet wide and manages to balance, beaming triumphantly down at Damon.

"Boy, you just got _served_!"

I love her, but sometimes, I just can't stand my best friend. I duck under the water and kick a little vampire speed into my strokes, coming up silently behind the boat while Caroline taunts Damon. I wrap a hand around her ankle and surge backwards.

She topples with a high-pitched shriek that feels like a needle straight to the center of my brain. As soon as she loses her balance I let go and swim for Damon.

He catches me in his arms, kicking to keep us both afloat as he smiles at me, droplets of water glittering seductively in his long eyelashes like he's an advertisement for swimwear.

"That's my girl," he purrs, snagging something as it floats by. His hand flexes, there's a popping sound, and then he places the hat gently on my head.

I take it off to examine the water damage. "The flower is missing!"

Damon clicks his tongue. "Too bad. Casualty of war, couldn't be avoided."

The soggy flower is floating next to me and I snatch it up, noting the torn threads where it was ripped off of the hat.

I give Damon an injured look. "You said I looked cute after I bought this hat."

"You do look cute," he agrees easily. "But that hat looks like a Hallmark card threw up all over it."

I press my lips together but before I can start to argue, Stefan interrupts us.

"You guys, where is Caroline? Did you see her come up?"

"She's probably floating just under my feet, getting ready to play Swamp Thing," Damon answers. "Why?"

Stefan frowns. "She should have come up by now."

"She can't exactly drown," I tell him as gently as I can manage, trying not to roll my eyes. The Salvatores are irrationally paranoid courtesy of the couple years of bad luck we had when they first moved to town and it seemed like somebody new was trying to kill us every week.

"I know that," Stefan says testily. "But she should have surfaced by now. And how do we know we're the only vampires in town this weekend? An underwater attack would be the perfect way to catch one of us by surprise."

Damon goes still. "Get back in the boat," he orders me.

Both their dark heads disappear under the water.

I groan. "Seriously? Not everything is a fight to the death."

I wait, but none of them come back up.

"So much for my romantic boat ride," I mutter, cramming my ruined hat back onto my head so I won't lose it. The water-logged brim sags down in front of my eyes and I resist the urge to curse, even though there's no one to hear.

I know from plenty of summers boating with a mischievous brother of my own that I'm not going to be able to crawl back into the boat unless I have the dock to brace it against, so I just grab hold of a canoe with each hand and start kicking my way back to shore.

Halfway there, there's a splash and Damon shakes water out of his eyes. "Did she come up?" he asks me tightly.

"No but Damon, she's _fine_. I'm sure she's just messing with you."

He grabs my hand and pulls me away from the canoe.

"Damon!" I protest, but then I have to hold my breath to keep from inhaling water. There must be some kind of secret to vampire-speed swimming that I don't know because he's worlds faster than I am. We're back to the dock in seconds.

He takes hold of my waist and with one powerful kick, he propels himself high enough to place me on the edge of the dock. The speed of the swim has my strapless bikini top placed much further south than it was intended to be and I yank it back into place, blushing furiously.

"Go back to the hou-" he begins, but the last word is interrupted by Caroline as she breaks the surface next to him with a huge grin.

"Surprise!" she yells, then looks from him to me. "Did I get them? They were really freaked, weren't they?"

Damon's jaw flexes once, hard, and my chest squeezes in response. It wasn't that long ago that the only disappearance that could have upset him was Stefan's, and it's probably two decades too soon to tease him with the fact that his list of important people is much longer these days.

I reach down and catch Damon's hand with a flirtatious smile, urging him up onto the dock next to me.

I make my voice a little guilty when I answer Caroline. "Actually, we were sort of using you as a distraction to get some alone time together, but Stefan's pretty worried. You should go find him."

Her grin fades. "Oops. For real worried?"

"Uh-huh," I nod.

"Ah, Stef gets his panties in a bundle over every new episode of _How I Met Your Mother_," Damon says dismissively. "Don't be too proud of yourself."

I dig an elbow into his ribs, but Caroline's not paying attention. She kicks off toward where the canoes are drifting. She doesn't make it far before Stefan appears, forgetting to even refill his lungs at first as he grabs her arms and hangs on tight.

"Are you hurt?" he manages once he gulps some air. "What happened?"

"I was just teasing," Caroline says in a small voice. "I didn't mean for you to—"

He lets go of her and just stares for a second, and then begins to swim back to shore.

"Oh, damn," I whisper, edging a little closer to Damon.

Stefan doesn't look at either of us when he gets to the dock, but Damon reaches a hand down and hauls him out of the water anyway.

"There are a lot more fun kinds of revenge than the silent treatment," Damon murmurs, so quietly that I barely catch it.

Stefan doesn't answer, but he waits there for Caroline and then nods toward the house when she finally arrives, looking uncharacteristically subdued.

"What about the canoes?" she asks nervously.

"I'll swim out and get them later," Damon says.

I wait for him to say something snarky, but he just looks the other way while Stefan takes Caroline's hand and pulls her back toward the lake house.

"I didn't mean to scare you, it was just a little joke. Stefan, say something," Caroline pleads, but Stefan doesn't respond until they make it all the way back to the porch. Just before the steps, he swings around, grabbing both her wrists and holding them behind her back as he growls something down at her, his whole body taut.

I shift uncomfortably and Damon slings an arm around me. "Don't look while the adults are playing," he warns in a surprisingly cheerful tone.

"Maybe we should go play referee," I say. "He looks really mad."

"What he is," Damon tells me, "is a damn fine manipulator."

"Yes but—"

"Are you kidding right now?" Damon asks incredulously. "Give them two minutes and I'll be able to have my way with you, free and clear."

Damon's probably right. Caroline goes crazy for Stefan when he's all dominant like that, and I'm sure he knows it.

"Wait, was this all some kind of elaborate set up?"

"Nope," Damon says, "But apparently Baby Bro has learned to take an opportunity when it hits him square in the face." He tilts his head, his eyes warming as he looks down at me. "You covered for me."

I sigh and look back out at the lake. "It was a mean trick to pull on you two."

It's not fair to tease a man who is constantly on guard for any hint of danger to his family. He freaked out when I cleaned the lake house early, for heaven's sake. As crazy as that is, there's something comforting about it, too. People can say what they want about Damon, but if anything ever happens to me, it really _will_ be over his dead body.

"Aaand there they go into the house." Damon's hand grazes the small of my back in a deliberately brief movement that leaves all my skin begging for more. "Do you want to write me that blank check now or later?"

A shiver runs through me and I try to cover it by clearing my throat and gazing out at the horizon. I hope he wants to cash that check in bed. Or on this dock. Or maybe he has somewhere more exotic in mind. Though I can't imagine why he'd waste it on something sexual when he knows he can talk me into almost anything.

"They're probably not in bed yet," I tell him, pressing my thighs together. My bathing suit feels damp and cool against my overheated skin.

"A few minutes one way or another won't hurt. They are absolutely on the path to sin and flagrant bet-losing." He leans close and lets his breath bathe my neck, my veins prickling for his attention. "I won't tell if you won't."

I have to ball my fists in my lap to keep from reaching for him and when I try to answer, the sound that comes out doesn't quite make it all the way into a word.

But I know a lot of things about my boyfriend, and one of them is that he does his best when challenged.

"Give me one good reason to lose," I finally manage.

His fingers give a deft flick and my bikini top falls in my lap, my nipples hardening in a rush that has nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with ice blue eyes running over me like the rush of a warm breeze.

"How do you feel about multiples?"

"Very good," I assure him, and he laughs.

"Like you would even know what a single was like anymore."

I smile but he doesn't see as he lowers his head to me.

I love to lose.


	14. The Flags We Fly

_Author's Note: Thanks to Goldnox for a brilliant and enthusiastic beta of this chapter, and for the title._

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**Chapter 14: The Flags We Fly**

**DAMON POV**

I pad out into the living room on silent feet, intent on my new favorite bedtime ritual.

I don't really need sleep that much, and I've done plenty of it. So on any night that no one is trying to kill us, I start by pouring a glass of my most expensive bourbon. The kind that slides over my tongue as easily as oxygen, but with deep hints of caramel and flame-hardened oak; the kind of liquor that tastes as old as I feel.

On those nights, I take my drink back to bed with me, sipping it slow while I watch Elena sleep, her body a languorous creamy comma punctuating my dark sheets. I could set it to music, drink it in like a multi-sensory buffet of all the best parts of my long life, but I doubt I could find music worthy of the moment. And it's easier in the graceful silence to slowly let the buzz of quality liquor and the scent of Elena's hair ease me into sleep.

Tonight I left her sleeping all in a tumble, the sheets clinging to only one corner of the mattress, her feet on my pillow and her hair in a state that will take me half an hour to brush out for her in the morning. I smile as I pour my drink in the quiet of the dark living room, eager to get back to her.

The sound of the liquor splashing into the glass isn't quite right.

I pause, looking suspiciously at the decanter, and then I hear it again. The slide of liquid coming from the kitchen. When I look over there's no one standing there, but I'm sure I heard it. And then there's a little scrap of a breath.

Well, fuck.

I pick up a different decanter to take with me, because I'm not going to waste my good booze erasing my memory of Caroline's latest wedding-invitation-font fuckwittism freakout. At least I had the sense to pull on pajama pants.

She's sitting on the floor with her back against the sink, a clear bottle of vodka sitting next to her that wasn't part of my last re-stocking of the liquor cabinet. Stef and I prefer variants on the whiskey/brandy continuum, in general. Not that I don't like to go rough and Russian on occasion, but you've got to be in a sort of pugilistic mood for that kind of shit. Which I suppose Caroline nearly always is.

She doesn't look up when I come in.

"What are we drinking to?" I ask carelessly, dropping down onto the floor across from her and leaning back against the kitchen island.

She glances up at me and her eyes linger on my face for a long moment before she looks back to the floor. She shakes her head.

"I didn't ask you to the prom, I asked you what we were drinking to," I remind her. "Don't write me a damn thesis over there."

"Is Elena asleep?" she asks in a whisper that could carry into neighboring states. Her words are a little fuzzy around the edges and I'm thinking that's _not_ her first bottle.

"Uh-huh."

"For sure?"

"Beauty Queen, you better believe we lost the hell out of that bet," I tell her dryly. "She'll wake up by Easter. Maybe."

She takes a sharp breath and a pull from her bottle, which is nearly empty.

I join her in a slow sip, enjoying the flavor and the silence enforced by the weighty log walls between me and the outside world.

"I'm a slut," Caroline announces, the quaver in her throat ruining her attempt at an objective announcement.

I swallow, consider the possibility that she's cheated on my brother, and discard it.

"Fuuuuuck," I groan, and swivel to drop flat onto the floor. "Me, too."

"I wasn't like this, you know, back when I was human," Caroline bursts out, her voice carrying that high-pitched edge that she gets when she's way too wound up. "I was normal, I swear. Now two days without sex and I'm out of my freaking mind," she complains, her voice starting to crack.

It feels good to lie on the floor. My abs are still tight with that good kind of burn, my back is tired, and I may as well get comfortable because I recognize a girl who shouldn't be drinking alone when I see one.

"Hear, hear," I agree. "It's fucking unfair."

"It's not unfair, it's sick. I need an intervention or something," she hiccups and glares accusingly at me. "Do you _know_ how many times we had to do it before I could calm down?"

"Why do you think I can't sit up?" I ask, rhetorically.

The smallest snort of a giggle escapes her. "Seriously though, Damon," she persists. "I'm like, _weird_. I know transitioning makes you horny but it doesn't make you, you know…does it?"

"Blondie, I turned when I was just this side of puberty. I'd drill a knothole in a tree before I realized it hadn't even bought me flowers first. What the fuck do I know?" I open one eye and give her a sideways look. "And in 1864? _Everything _counted as kinky."

She rolls her eyes, but I can see her lips fighting against a smile. "You're right. You're a sexual deviant, anyway."

I tip my glass to her. "Whatever, slut."

She huffs indignantly and kicks me with her bare foot. I tuck a hand behind my head and take a drink to seal the toast.

"You better get another bottle if we're gonna talk about the birds and the bees, Barbie."

She snorts. "I'd better get another bottle if I'm gonna talk to you, period."

"Touche." I drink to that, downing the rest of my good bourbon and moving on to something with a little less flavor and more knock-me-down punch.

Caroline downs the rest of her bottle and drops it into the trash with a clink of glass against glass. She sniffles quickly as she opens the freezer, but she's not fooling me. She's playing it tough now, but I didn't come far behind the waterworks.

I wince and try not to think too carefully about how she might have gone from losing a sex bet to crying on the floor of the kitchen because she thinks she's too kinky. It's entirely possible my brother and my boot need to get re-acquainted.

Caroline breaks the seal on her new bottle of vodka and I hold up my glass.

"To being relentlessly horny, deviantly perverted vampires."

She laughs once, bitterly, and taps her drink to mine with a little too much enthusiasm.

"God it sucks," I deadpan. I take a sip and then change my mind, opening my throat and chugging because obviously I have some catching up to do.

"I mean, at least you don't have a dick. It's like Pinocchio's nose, in your pants. Encased behind steel teeth with a taste for your blood, which was obviously somebody's sick idea of a joke," I opine, rolling up onto one elbow long enough to pour myself a fresh drink.

Caroline cradles her bottle against her chest and snickers, obviously distracted, so I roll with it.

"I mean, I might as well be dowsing for Elena. Thank God the fucking thing doesn't have an alarm function or I'd have to entirely sign over my dignity to the public domain."

She chokes on her next sip of vodka and when she comes up for air she's laughing in earnest, the dried tear streaks on her cheeks shining in the dim moonlight from the patio doors.

"I mean, at my age I'm supposed to have to take a pill on Saturdays at noon so it kicks in by cocktail hour but _before_ Matlock. And instead I'm buying bed sheets by their shear-strength rating."

Caroline has to set down her bottle because she's laughing so hard the liquid is starting to splash out the top. "I know," she gasps. "Four sets of sheets this month. This _month. _Who does that?" she giggles.

"Fucking vampirism. Ruins your fucking life." I take a swig, and she reaches for her bottle. "Well, at least we're hot."

The last line gets her and she abandons her drink to clutch her stomach instead, the spasms of giggling finally tipping her off balance so she lands on the floor next to me.

It's a good thing that Stefan sleeps like the freshly vervained because how the hell would we explain the joke to him? I chuckle at the ceiling and finish my drink.

When she finally calms down, gasping for air, we're both sprawled across the floor like teenagers after our first kegger.

I tip my head toward her and whisper conspiratorially, "Stef likes it, you know. Gives him permission to get his freak on."

Her breathing catches, she flips over, and suddenly I have blonde hair in my mouth and pressure like an industrial-strength vise around my rib cage.

I frown. "I'm going to stop being nice to you if you don't stop fucking hugging me all the time."

She snorts and doesn't respond, but she does let me go long enough to grab her chilled bottle before flopping down on the floor again.

"Stay up and get drunk with me?" she asks in a voice that's still two sizes too small for the spunky, iron-willed cheerleader that I'm used to.

"Abso-fucking-lutely," I agree.

**XOXO**

"They're obviously soul mates," Elena says sagely.

"I suppose it was only a matter of time," Stefan agrees.

There's a mechanical click and whir.

"Are you two jokers done yet?" I ask without opening my eyes. My voice sounds like I put it through a garbage disposal.

"Don't move, I need one more picture for Facebook," Elena says.

I give her the finger, then lift my head and pry an eye open to assess the damage. My head is roughly two and a half times heavier than yesterday, a weight it doesn't reach very often now that my best drinking buddy is both invisible and sober.

Still, I put my considerable strength to work and manage to ratchet it up high enough to see that Caroline is still asleep, sprawled on her belly with her head on my abs. Her hair covers her face, but I can see it concave and then billow as she breathes.

I drop my head back onto the floor and close my eyes. "For the love of Christ, somebody break my neck so I won't wake up until this is over."

Elena clicks her tongue. "That's what you get for drinking a kiddie pool worth of whiskey in one night."

I wince. "Even the round decanter, the smallish one?"

"Oh yeah," she says smugly.

"Damn," I mutter. "Blood? Pretty please?"

"Sure," she says. "As soon as you explain one thing."

I manage to shove a grunt of assent through my sourly desiccated throat and Elena taps my chest with one finger. When I open my eyes she points.

To Caroline's blaringly pink Macbook, open on the kitchen floor next to us. Its screen brightly displays a page thanking us for our $2,340.66 order from DirtyGurlzzToyBox dot com. Charged to my black AmEx.

I have a vague memory of Caroline's grin as she hit the final button and raised her hand for a high five. _Let the freak flag fly!_ she'd exclaimed proudly, and at the time, twenty-three hundred bucks seemed like a small price to pay to keep her out of the Kleenex box. Especially since at least a grand of that was going straight into my personal stash of future sexy times.

I glance quickly up at Elena, but there's no trace of anger in her amusement, so I decide I can afford to keep Caroline's secret for a little longer.

I close my eyes again. "Trust me, that's a story best told over drinks. In about thirty years."

Stefan clears his throat. "Try forty."

* * *

_Author's Note: I want to finish this fic up before the finale, so expect more frequent posts for the next week and a half. And if you want to keep the last one to comfort you after whatever shenanigans they get up to in the finale, I won't blame you a bit. _


	15. Pieces of A Past Life

_Author's Note: We're past the chastity belt bet series of chapters, so they're home from the lake house now. Thanks so much to everyone for leaving such lovely, kind reviews! Also, I wrote this chapter a while back before I understood that the Other Side was for supernatural creatures only. So for the purposes of this story, it is a sort of Purgatory for those who have sinned a little too much to make it to heaven yet. _

_Huge thanks to Goldnox for being a viciously talented beta, and to dnkdreams for a fantastic idea for what Damon uses for a bookmark._

* * *

**Chapter 15: Pieces of a Past Life**

**DAMON POV**

Elena storms in ahead of me and slams the door to her childhood home.

"Real mature, Gilbert," I call out, annoyed, and let myself in.

Jeremy is passing through the foyer, soda in hand and he stops to raise an eyebrow at me.

"What's that all about?"

"Life lesson, Baby Gilbert. If you're going to use ladies underwear as a bookmark, make sure it belongs to your current lady."

"You use panties for a bookmark?" Jeremy says, looking impressed.

"Not panties. Piece of a garter belt."

Jeremy whistles through his teeth. "No wonder she's slamming doors in your face."

"It's ridiculous," I scoff. "If I had liked her, I would have kept the whole girl instead of just the garter."

Jeremy's gaze flicks to something over my shoulder and I automatically check for intruders. Nothing.

"Ric says you should tell her where you got it cause it's fucking hilarious and then she won't be as pissed."

I shoot Jeremy a disapproving look. "It wouldn't kill you to clue the rest of us in when he's here."

"He just showed up," Jeremy tells me. "Dude, I've been trying to get ahold of you for two days to see if you wanted to come today and the first time Damon has woman trouble you show up? What the hell?"

I hate it when Jeremy goes off like this. It invariably makes me want to punch him in his Sixth-Sensing little face.

Jeremy pauses, then frowns. "He does not. Elena can only stay mad at him for like 12 seconds at a stretch these days." He laughs at whatever Ric says in return. "So what's up, your ghost friends are better than us now?"

I ignore them and try to decide if I should go after Elena now, or give her time to cool off.

Jeremy's face falls. "You what?"

I grab him by the collar and haul him outside, calling into the house. "We're going to the store. Back soon."

"What was that for?" Jeremy asks, shoving me away.

I nod at the Camaro and he glares at me, but gets in.

"That was because your personal haunting has a direct line to the dead relatives of everybody coming over for the barbeque. So whatever he just told you that twisted your panties is something best censored for the general public."

"Right," Jeremy says distractedly, glancing into the backseat. I pull into the street while he listens.

"Hello, Google Translate?" I say impatiently. "Clicking, clicking…"

Jeremy cocks his head as if waiting for Ric's approval. He must get it because he turns back to me. "He saw Jenna. And he says he's been spending time with Isobel."

"Izzy's a bitch," I remind my old friend before I fully think through what Jeremy just said. "Wait, Jenna ended up in the same place as Isobel? Her wild younger years must have been crazier than I thought."

"So vamps don't have humanity switches on the Other Side?" Jeremy asks Ric, then pauses. "Whoa. Yeah, but Dude, we don't have to talk about this if you don't want to."

A couple bottles in and a few hours from dawn, it's not uncommon to get a little leaky. It wouldn't be the first time I'd seen Ric not at his best, but it might be a first for Jeremy. I cuff the kid in the shoulder though, because everybody knows it's not kosher to call that shit out.

"He says Jenna's not on the Other Side," Jeremy says in a subdued voice. "Not like him and Isobel."

Ah, shit. I pull up in front of the 7-Eleven and stomp the parking brake, tossing Jeremy my wallet.

"Go buy some chips or something for the barbeque. And get some of Elena's lemonade."

Jeremy throws it back. "I can pay for some damn chips."

"Then do it," I snap. He glares at me, slamming the door on his way out. What is it with Gilberts and the fucking doors today?

Once he's gone, I realize I don't know for sure if Ric stayed in the car, went with Jeremy, or zapped back to his celestial bachelor pad.

I should have guessed that Ric would get a shot at the shinier version of the afterlife, in the end. Maybe God isn't the dick people make him out to be. Not if he looked past all that shit Esther engineered to see the truth: the real Alaric was the guy dying in my family's crypt with tears streaking into his five o'clock shadow because he wanted to protect us from him.

I should have fucking killed him. I should have drunk a toast to my buddy, snapped his neck and walked away.

I clear my throat and squint out the window.

"Ric, if you've got a little Door A, Door B dilemma going, you do what you need to do, man," I tell him, feeling like an asshole.

I know why he's hanging around. I should have told him months ago that we didn't need him, but I kind of miss the grouchy old bastard and talking to him through an emo teenager is better than nothing.

"Look, I know you weren't the biggest fan of Elena and me, but you can fuck right off and angel text that on up to Judgy Jenna, too, cause I'm not going anywhere." I send a sharp look into the backseat, which doesn't feel quite so empty as it looks. Just like his barstool sometimes doesn't feel as empty as it looks.

I have never and will never admit it, even to Elena, but the reason I started saving him a seat wasn't out of respect. It was because the night before the council memorial, I felt him sitting next to me and I was too drunk to register that he wasn't until somebody tried to sit right on top of him.

I flattened the poor sap. It wasn't until the guy was bleeding onto the greasy floorboards of the Grill that my eyes and brain finally sorted out the fact that Ric didn't need that seat anymore.

"I'll take care of Elena and Jeremy," I tell my old drinking buddy. "So don't feel like you have to spend eternity in purgatory with your ex-wife so you can watch out for them. I've got this."

I chuckle bitterly. "Besides, at least then I wouldn't be stuck talking to myself in the 7-Eleven parking lot like I've got my own fucking Tinkerbell."

We wait in our customary silence for Jeremy to come back. For a second I wish I would have been better when Ric was alive. So he could trust me now, and wouldn't still be backseat driving my babysitting job when he should be moving on. But no, fuck that. I did what I did.

Jeremy flinches as he opens the door, plastic shopping bag in hand. "Jesus, what'd you say?" he asks me. "Easy. Do I have to- damn, okay, alright already." He gets in, and then glares into the backseat.

"He says don't ever fucking call him Tinkerbell again. What the hell were you guys doing out here while I was- jeez, Ric, kidding. Heaven made you really uptight, Dude." Jeremy looks at me. "He says you're a dickhead and he's glad he died so he doesn't have to put up with you."

The teenager rolls his eyes and reluctantly relays, "And he says there's nobody alive or dead who is better for Elena than you are."

I give Jeremy a cocky smirk and start the car without meeting his eyes. "Obviously."

Jeremy pauses. "Damon, you're not having one of your _things_, are you? Because Elena's just mad. She's not dumping you. Just throw away that other girl's underwear or whatever."

"You know, if I needed advice on women, and I _don't,_" I tell him, putting the car in gear, "I wouldn't get it from the likes of you. Patrick Swayze back there has a girlfriend in Heaven and one in Purgatory and don't even get me started on you. And stop fucking swearing when your sister's around. You're getting me in trouble."

"Whatever, dude." Jeremy glances into the backseat and then slouches into his seat.

I pull out into the street, accidentally hitting the gas too hard when I see him look back at Ric. Guess my old drinking buddy isn't ready to blow this popsicle stand just yet.

**ELENA POV**

I'm cutting up vegetables for the kababs and the rhythmic click of a sharp blade has just started to calm my jagged nerves when I hear the boys pull into the driveway. I tell myself I won't look up because I don't want to see Damon and all his wretched beauty that women have been throwing themselves at for 170 years.

When I'm gone, some supernatural calamity or another finally claiming me, they'll go on doing it for another 170 years, flirting and touching and offering. And someday, out of loneliness or pain or maybe just boredom, he'll give in.

The knife slips free of my fingers and I brace myself against the counter, my head dropping between my arms. It has to be my vampire emotions, running far outside the lines again. But I can't stand the thought of strange hands on him, his body given over to someone who doesn't know who he is, who just loves the beauty of him without understanding it. Who doesn't know how very easy it is to hurt him.

How he will never let you be careful with him but you have to be anyway.

I look out the window and catch a flash of black tousled hair as he turns to say something to Jeremy. My eyes flick to my little brother who is so much bigger than I think he should be, his gangly pre-teen frame filled out to thick muscle over a year ago. He grins and I realize with a painful throb that he's nearly as handsome as Damon. I think of the string of silly girlfriends he's had lately and I want to slap all of them. He's not some kid, damn it, for them to make out with behind the school and forget by next Monday.

I pick up the knife and start determinedly chopping again before they come inside and see that I'm coming unwound. Again.

I don't know how many years it takes to get a handle on intensified vampire emotions, but I don't think I'm going to be able to put up with myself that long.

Damon comes in and leans against the door to the kitchen. He doesn't touch me.

He won't, until I forgive him.

God, that man just breaks my heart sometimes.

"Got your fancy lemonade," he offers, and my throat squeezes closed.

He thinks I'm jealous about the garter belt scrap in his book, and I am. But it's so much more than that.

His books are private. That's why he never read anywhere but his room until we got together and I wanted to hang out in the living room instead. I can barely stand the knowledge of all the women in his past, much less the fact that they're hidden inside his _books._

It hurts to think of their hands, touching him without ever touching _him._ It makes me want to spill blood and break bones and laugh and laugh and laugh at my strength and their weakness.

That's not the person I want to be.

I hold the knife and make very precise squares of bell pepper. I know I need to talk things out with Damon but I need to get a handle on myself first, somehow.

"So we're still in a fight," Damon says knowingly. "You might as well give up, Gilbert. You know you can't resist me."

Anger flushes heat through my skin. "You think you can just buy me lemonade every time you sleep with someone else?" I snap.

"First, Jeremy bought it. Second, considering the tree that grew the lemons hadn't been planted yet when I slept with her… I don't know, maybe?" he says dryly. "Come on, you know you're going to forgive me an hour after you try to sleep in your old room tonight. Why don't we just fast forward?"

I turn and look at him.

Disappointment flickers in the crystal blue of his eyes before he holds his hands up defensively. "Or not. Whatever."

"You kept it that long?" I ask him, my voice uneven with more emotions than I could explain to him even if I could calm down long enough to try.

I turn back to my vegetables, blinking furiously. The silence between us is heavy with his past. Too many years to slice through with one talk.

I listen to his breathing, which is a little too fast for the fact that he's standing so still. The label on my favorite brand of lemonade crinkles as he turns it in his hands, and then there's a thunk of heavy glass against flesh as he tosses the bottle in the air and catches it before setting it with a tiny scrape on the kitchen island.

There's a whisper of boot soles as he starts to leave.

I can feel the silent resignation settling into his eyes, the guilt that he won't admit to me or himself that will still thirst after he pours one or two or three bottles of bourbon into it.

My jealousy doesn't hurt as much as this.

"Damon, wait."

I flee across the kitchen to him, knocking him back a step as his arms close around me reflexively. He drops his head and inhales as if he missed the scent of me in the few hours since I realized the scrap of lace in his book had a tiny clasp on the end of it that made it infinitely more damning.

Damon drops a kiss on my temple. "Hey there."

"Hi," I tell him, the sound muffled because I have my face buried in his shoulder, under the edge of his leather jacket. How the hell am I supposed to be angry at him when he's like this?

I pull back and cup his face in my hands, his perfect jawline fitting just right in my imperfect palms.

"You don't lose the right to touch me every time I'm mad at you for five minutes, okay? You know that, right?"

"Groping acceptable during fights," he deadpans. "Noted. Why didn't you say so? We could have been having a lot less fights."

I purse my lips, exasperated. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

I lay a kiss over his heart, wishing I could take back that part of him that's always waiting for me to un-choose him. That still believes I could.

He folds my hand into his and tugs me toward the back door. "Come here."

Outside the air is crisp but it doesn't sting my flesh the way it used to. Damon sits in one of the big wicker chairs and tugs me into his lap.

"You warm enough out here?"

I nod against his neck but he shrugs out of his jacket anyway, wrapping it around me instead. I don't protest, because I know he won't take it back no matter what I say.

Wrapped in warm, safe leather with the collar of his shirt tickling my nose, my anger is gone like it never existed.

Forget learning to control my emotions. I should just let Damon cuddle them away.

All that's left is the empty ache of fear under my ribs that I don't know how to quiet. I stroke his chest, wondering if his skin recognizes my touch, if it can feel the love bleeding out of me. I hope so.

"So, I told you I worked as a mob enforcer," he tells me.

My eyebrows shoot up. Is he actually going to tell me why he kept the garter?

"I can feel you looking surprised," he teases. "Ghost Ric slapped me down. Said I had to. You don't want to piss off the dead, trust me."

"Nope," I agree hastily, before he can change his mind. I don't know why Damon is so reticent about his past. Old human guys do nothing but tell stories, but the vampires in my life never seem to be in the mood.

"The mob has great perks. It was like having a douchebag identification service." I can hear the smile in his voice. "I sampled a few that were supposed to be on my side of the fence, but they didn't catch me until I went after the big boss that last time. It was a hell of a convenient job, except that everybody in organized crime is way too impressed with themselves all the time."

"So you fit right in?" I ask dryly.

He digs his fingers into my sides and I squeal and slap his hands. "No tickling," I warn him sternly. "We are supposed to be making up and I will definitely be mad at you again if you tickle."

He narrows his eyes in an unconvincing show of irritation. "Do you want to hear the story or not?"

I nod, tucking my head in under his chin. His arms tighten around me underneath his jacket.

"Anyway, they pissed me off, but I didn't want to eat them all and lose a job where they basically paid me to be a vampire. So I, ah-" he pauses. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. I was sleeping with this one girl, the trophy wife of Number Three Douchebag. It was practically a public service, since I'm sure to him she was just a prettier substitute for his hand."

He pauses again, but despite his dissembling I'm getting a pretty clear picture of what his revenge against the arrogant mobsters looked like. I wonder exactly how many garter belt bookmarks he has.

"Are you sure you want to hear this story? It's not exactly pre-Pictionary-party wholesome," he tells me uneasily.

I'm not at all sure I want to hear the story, but I am certain that otherwise, I'll be imagining all the worst possibilities.

"Um, it wasn't a crucifix bookmark," I remind him. "So I kind of figured it would be R-rated. Yes, I want to hear the real story."

"Okaaaay," Damon says, sounding unconvinced. "But I warned you. Anyway, I was going down on this girl, and a guy walks in. Not her husband but his bodyguard, who was the size of a fucking Volkswagen. And I wasn't paying much attention, so he was right up at the bed before I realized he was there. He grabbed me, and she was all freaking out and screaming and as he dragged me off of her, her garter got caught in my teeth because the adrenaline popped my fangs out."

He clears his throat. "So that was awkward. And then he chucked me out the window."

I wince. "I suppose it wasn't a ground-floor apartment."

"No, but it was their beach house. If I'd have gone out the window in the Vegas penthouse, it would have been a bitch. So only second-story, thankfully for the fucking bodyguard," he says darkly.

"Well, what did you expect him to do when he caught you with his boss' wife?" I point out.

"Oh that wasn't it. He was pissed because he was screwing her too."

I shake my head, feeling a little dizzy.

"Anyway, that's not the point. So I hit the ground outside and that didn't do anything for my mood, so I jumped back in the window and explained some common fucking courtesy to the guy in a language he could understand. It took a while, and it wasn't until I was done and I calmed down that I realized I still had the garter snagged on my fang. And he was bleeding on the carpet and the girl was crying and screaming at me that her husband was going to catch us and we were all going to die and I really needed to compel her but I was too busy picking lace out of my teeth to get around to it." Damon shrugs. "I thought it was funny. So I kept the garter. I didn't realize it had a cock-block curse on it that hadn't worn off yet."

I don't know what to say. That's what he used to do? Kill people for money and sleep with people's wives when he didn't like how they talked to him? Hang out with people who owned penthouses and beach houses and had bodyguards?

What must he think of our life now, in boring little Mystic Falls? Having barbeques and playing ongoing Pictionary tournaments with our ragtag family of vampires, hybrids, vampire hunters, humans and witches?

He shifts uncomfortably beneath me. "Elena, you can burn the damn thing, you know I don't care."

I hold him tighter and I feel his chin brushing against my hair as he tries to sneak a peek at my face.

The front door opens and a babble of competing voices enters the house. They must have carpooled. I listen to the familiar voices, letting the sound soothe the edges of the echoing emptiness that is my chest.

"Where's Damon?" Caroline asks. "He promised me he was going to do side-dishes this time, and I bet you he didn't make the ambrosia salad."

"He and Elena are making up," Jeremy tells her.

"Ewww," Kyle whines. "Just send them home already. They'll just be disgusting all afternoon and by this evening I'll be packing my boxes to move back to New York."

"I thought you said you had a date? So you can't bitch about the singles scene anymore," Caroline protests. "And what happened with Damon and Elena? Should I go check on them?" She sighs. "I swear, everybody in this town would be in an asylum in a week if it weren't for me."

"They're fine," Jeremy says. "Leave 'em alone or Damon will get all bitchy."

"I _did_ have a date," Kyle sighs in answer. "Guy two towns down the highway. We go out to dinner and he introduces me to the waiter, who he _doesn't _know, as his cousin. And didn't even get why I was mad. I am actually going to grow old and die before I get laid again."

"You're immortal," Stefan points out.

"I know," Kyle groans. "Don't remind me."

"So _that's_ why there are always NYU brochures lying around the boarding house," Caroline says. "You're trying to talk Elena into going, aren't you?"

"You should both go there," Jeremy says. "It was stupid enough that Elena thought she couldn't go to college until I was old enough to leave town. The fact that you and Stefan stayed here too is past stupid and bordering on insane."

"You're welcome, brat," Caroline says. "Where are your serving spoons?"

"I don't need four parents," Jeremy complains. "What exactly is it you think you're doing by putting your lives on hold for me?"

"We can go to college whenever," Stefan says easily. "Kyle's the only one who minds, and he was the one who decided to stay."

"My friends in New York aren't as entertaining as you all," the bartender complains. "I'm in no hurry to move back. Or I wouldn't be, if I wasn't the only damn gay man in Virginia."

"Elena," Damon says, nudging me until I turn my attention away from the conversation inside the kitchen. "Come on, have a good rant. On the house."

"Would you tell me something? Honestly?"

"Yes," he says without hesitation.

"Really honestly, not just if you think it is what I need to hear?" I challenge.

"Kind of my specialty, gorgeous," he says dryly. "Maybe you noticed, I don't know, one of the hundred times you tried to slap me for telling you things you didn't want to admit?"

"Are you happy?" I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut. "Here? With our life?"

Damon tenses.

I know he'll lie if he isn't. I know he loves me, and he's Damon so he will ignore or kill anything that gets in the way of that. But Jeremy's right- I've been so selfish, keeping all of us here so I can be here if my brother needs me. I should have been sure that was what Damon wanted. It's his life, too.

"What's this about, Elena? This isn't about the damn garter, is it? Look, if you don't want to move yet and you're bored you can take classes online, get a job," he offers dubiously. "Or, God help us all, actually learn to knit. I'll teach you to speak Italian if you want. Maybe we could take a trip. Kyle and Caroline can watch out for Jeremy, keep him from getting himself killed for a few weeks."

I pull back and touch his lips to interrupt him. "I didn't ask about me. I asked about you."

"Yes," he explains patiently. "But you know where I'm at. So if you're asking, it's because _you're _unhappy."

I cock my head. "Damon, I have everything I ever wanted. I'm surrounded by family and friends and nobody is trying to kill us. Jeremy's going to be able to go to college, and through the grace of God, I'm not even going to outlive him because he happens to be an immortal vampire hunter."

Damon's brilliant eyes are shrewd and cautious on mine. He doesn't believe me.

"I have you," I tell him, tracing his cheek. "Of course I'm happy. But I know after everything you've done, this has all got to be pretty boring for you. I'm half a century from sophisticated, or rich, or wild and crazy." I bite my lip. "I know I said I wanted to stay until Jeremy graduated, but if you don't want to, we can try something else."

A slow smile dawns across his gorgeous face. "I'm sitting here, telling you a story about being an assassin, hoping you won't catch on to the fact that I don't remember that girl's name, and you are worried that I _miss _my old life? Elena, it's a good thing you're cute, because you're a little bit nuts."

"But-"

He doesn't let me finish before he threads his fingers through my hair and tilts my head back so he can kiss me hard. By the time he pulls away, I'm pressing tightly against him and his jacket has fallen to the ground.

"Elena, I'm very unhappy," he tells me seriously. "And it's all your fault." He frowns disapprovingly. "It's all these damn clothes you insist on wearing."

I kiss him again. "Shut up."

"No, I mean it," he says. "If you cared about my happiness, you wouldn't wear them."

I stick out my tongue at him and he waggles his eyebrows. "That's a start."

I laugh, shaking my head at him.

"That's better," he says, pulling me tight against his chest. "I love you. I fucking love our life. Period."

Caroline sticks her head out the patio door. "Damon, are you being an idiot?"

"Honey, leave them alone," Stefan calls from inside the house.

"Five says the lawn chair comes in through the window," Kyle says.

"Ric says his five is on the lawn chair coming through _Caroline's_ window at o'sex thirty tonight," Jeremy adds.

"I'm going to hit_ you_ with a lawn chair if you don't stop acting like everything is Damon's fault," I threaten Caroline.

Damon steals one more kiss and boosts me up to my feet. "See? Blonde/brunette catfights twice a week. What more can a man ask for?"

"To never have to make ambrosia salad," Stefan says flatly from the kitchen. "Is there anything more emasculating than a cold casserole involving marshmallows? Seriously, Care, you _want _to eat this?"

"If your brother wasn't a great big lying jerkface, we would already _have _side dishes," she says, whirling to head back inside. "And we wouldn't have to make ambrosia salad at the last minute."

I pick up Damon's jacket and dust it off, handing it back to him with a raised eyebrow. "And you don't want to move away?"

He gives my hair a playful tug and smiles.

We head inside, together.

* * *

_Author's Note: Hello everybody! Soooo, I got a job. Which is a good thing, but it also means I'm going to be in nowhere Nevada working a moo-billion hours, so I'll do my best to get the last two chapters of this posted in a timely manner, and if it's after the finale…well at least we'll have something happy to start the long summer hiatus. Thanks to all of you for being so supportive of this story!_


	16. It's About Time

_Author's Note: Hi everybody! Sorry it's been a bit of a delay on this chapter because real life ate me alive. But fanfiction will prevail! Especially since the season is over (weeps bitter tears). One more chapter of HEA after this one, folks! Just to keep you caught up, in the last chapter, Elena asked Damon if he liked their new life. This chapter picks up right where the last one left off, in the middle of the family bbq/Pictionary tournament. Huge thanks to my incredibly awesome and supportive beta, Goldnox, who can brighten the most boring workday! _

* * *

**Chapter 16: It's About Time**

**DAMON POV**

It's weird, but Elena's question really got me thinking about my new life. Which I haven't much, except to thank fucking Christ that nobody's kicked me out of it yet.

The biggest difference is that it's noisy. No matter where I lived before, it was quiet and neat until I wanted it to be noisy. Now, soundproofed bedrooms or not there's always somebody coming or going, making noise, making a mess.

Makes it a little easier to think, somehow.

I lean against the counter and smirk as I watch my brother wrinkle his brow at the marshmallows he's pouring into a bowl.

"This is not food. This is like two removes from edible for a vampire." He shoots me a pained glance. "There's so much weird food nowdays. Have you ever tried Cheetos?"

"Pop-rocks," I tell him. "I thought Jell-O was the worst food invention until I tried Pop-rocks. It's like shoving firecrackers in your nose."

Elena comes over and stands next to me, offering me a shy little smile. I note that she retrieved the bottle of lemonade I brought her. I slide a hand across her back and hook a finger through her beltloop, tugging her closer. I don't want Kyle to start bitching about our PDA, but every time she forgives me, I feel like a cat that's one life closer to the great shoebox in the sky. I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do when I hit my limit.

"At least when _we_ were human, food still resembled food," Stefan gripes, mixing fruit and goop together in a bowl with the marshmallows.

"You're just saying that because you were too young to enjoy the glories of defending the South with me," I rib. "All of us living off of rancid bacon and hardtack as moldy as our socks after two straight months of rain."

"Gross," Elena protests. "Socks don't actually get moldy, do they?"

I raise an eyebrow. "By the end of the second month, there wasn't much that wasn't moldy. I thought I was finally growing chest hair until I realized it was green."

Caroline shudders. "Really, Damon? You couldn't have saved that stunning announcement until after we ate?"

"Now that Stefan's cooking, it's kind of a public service to ruin people's appetites, don't you think?" I propose.

Elena pokes me in the ribs. "Be nice."

"Beauty Queen, before you started castration via marshmallow experiments on Baby Bro, did you happen to check in the fridge?"

"Brother," Stefan says, calmly poking a miniature marshmallow into my ear canal. "Don't you worry. I've got masculinity to spare."

I shake the marshmallow free and flick it back at him.

Caroline perks up, heading for the fridge. "Why, did you make ambrosia salad?"

"Fuck no," I protest, offended. "Does it _look _like my balls are hanging from your rearview mirror?"

"He made potato salad for you," Elena says, giving me a soft-eyed smile that almost makes purposeful culinary butchery worth it.

Caroline digs in the fridge until she emerges triumphantly with a Tupperware bowl, taking an eager peek at the contents.

"Wait," she says suspiciously. "You didn't put your fancy-"

"Road-cone-colored mustard," I interrupt. "Just like you like it."

She turns her wide baby blues my direction and I hastily tug Elena around in front of me, wrapping affectionate arms around her waist.

"Am I just a shield to you?" my girlfriend asks without heat.

But I don't dare risk it. My brother's fiancée is looking dangerously melty and she's a hugger. The fact that she doesn't like me doesn't always save me from being the target of this particularly offensive personal habit.

"Don't you point that sleeping-puppy-calendar look at me," I warn Caroline. "I was just trying to get you to stop name-calling. I did my damn part for our on-going attempts to play human."

Elena shifts away as if to get out of the way of the Forbes rib-compaction procedure but I hang onto her with no small amount of desperation.

"I'm sorry I called you a jerk-face," Caroline says softly.

"Sure you are," Kyle says, swiping a goopy marshmallow out of Stefan's bowl and popping it in his mouth. "For about the next minute and twenty seconds, by my count. Are we eating and playing or playing then eating?"

Caroline glares at him. "Ew, Kyle. Have you ever heard of germs?"

He rolls his eyes. "We're all immune to disease."

"I don't think basic hygiene is too much to ask," Caroline says snippily.

"Where are Matt and Bonnie, anyway?" Elena asks, referencing the only two members of our group that still have to worry about germs.

"Donovan had pressing tables to bus," I tell her. "And Brunhilda probably found an AA meeting full of people to practice her judgmental face on."

"Bonnie's dad is on a home-for-dinner kick," Jeremy reports, sauntering into the kitchen and stealing another marshmallow out of Stefan's bowl. "Oh, nice. Grandma used to make this stuff at Thanksgiving."

Stefan throws Caroline an injured look and I cuff Jeremy lightly in the shoulder. "Have some respect. Your GrandSteffy went to all this trouble to make weird crap for you to eat. The least you can do is not compare his glop to your familial glop recipe."

"Hey!" Elena protests. "Grandma's ambrosia salad was really good."

I sneak a thumb under the hem of her shirt and stroke the soft skin just above her waistband. "If we don't stop talking about ambrosia salad, my balls are going to shrivel up so small that Caroline can put them on her keychain instead of her rearview mirror."

"Too late," Jeremy says, stepping neatly out of my reach.

I move to go after him and Elena folds her hands over mine, hiding the extracurricular activities of my exploring thumb. I settle back against the counter, sending her little brother a narrow-eyed look so he knows I'll pay him back for that one later.

"Regular teams, right?" he asks, eyeing the potato salad Caroline's still hugging happily to her chest.

"Doesn't count toward the tournament, otherwise," Stefan says mildly.

"Salvatores have to play with a handicap," Caroline protests, putting her prized potato salad back in the fridge, away from Jeremy's hungry growth-spurt hands.

Stefan abandons his marshmallow mush and slides an arm around her waist. "You're practically a Salvatore," he reminds her, pressing a kiss to her shoulder from behind.

She beams at him and cranes her neck for a kiss.

Kyle sighs and I look away. "Once she joins the team, we won't need a handicap," I point out. "Girl draws like Jackson Pollock with ADD."

"I don't have a regular team," Kyle complains.

"You're on Jeremy's team," I leer meaningfully. "Taking Donovan's place. I hear they play your style over there."

I take Elena with me when I dodge the punch her brother aimes at my shoulder.

"Don't be a douche, Damon," he complains.

Kyle sighs again. "What happened to the lovely lecture about tolerance you gave my favorite customer last week?"

"How is he your favorite customer after what he called you?" Elena asks in disbelief.

"You should have seen the tip he left me after Damon got done explaining about the practical application of equal rights," Kyle grins.

"He should have kept the money for the reconstructive surgery," Jeremy says, opening the bag of chips he bought earlier. "Hey, if I have to trade out Matt, I get Ric, too."

I drop a kiss on Elena's hair and sidestep to sweep her brother into a headlock. "Why, so you can make up all his answers? Good try, Whoopi, but no cigar."

"I heard the tournament prize was an Acura," Kyle pipes up. "I wouldn't have shown up if the stakes were back down to fancy cigars."

Jeremy drives his kneecap into the vulnerable tendons at the back of my knee. I manage to shift my weight in time to keep from crashing to the floor, but I lose my grip on him. I raise an eyebrow. "You into the Rock Stars again? That was almost fast enough for a qualification to the Walkers and Wheelchairs 5K."

Jeremy flips his shaggy hair out of his face and narrows his eyes at me, which does nothing to hide the glint of pride in them. "Fast enough to put an end to you, old man."

"Jeremy," Elena snaps. "We do not joke about killing vampires in this house."

"That's right," I agree primly. "In this house, we just kill them. We don't joke about it first."

She turns her death glare on me and Jeremy laughs. "No, seriously, though, I get Ric."

"It's one of the only games he can play," Caroline points out sympathetically. "There's probably not that much to do on the Other Side."

"I'll tell the truth about his guesses," Jeremy promises. "_I give you my oath."_

"Jeremy Gilbert, you did _not _just invoke the sacred Hunter's Oath over a ghost and a damn Pictionary game!" Kyle exclaims in exasperation. **

"He so did," Caroline giggles, heading for the living room.

Elena pokes me pointedly in the ribs. "I _told_ Damon we weren't betting cars."

I catch her hand and pretend to bite her finger and she blushes and bumps me with her hip.

"What's the harm?" I ask her. "I'll just win it back anyway."

"Ah, ah, ah," Stefan cautions. "I want my half. Which means we have to liquidate. I don't need another car."

"I like Acuras," Caroline complains.

"You can have my half," Stefan offers with a grin.

"It's the passenger side," I warn her. "And I play my music very loud and drive recklessly."

"Doesn't matter," Elena declares. "You won't be driving, because you guys are _not _winning again." She and Caroline share a determined glance and I try not to laugh.

They're dead last. Every single time. Which sucks, because the whole reason I bet a car was to get Elena out of her mommy-mobile SUV. She should be driving something classier. Something sleek and beautiful without being ostentatious, with a stereo whose volume knob doesn't fall off twice a week. Don't get me wrong, that boxy thing's great for hauling coffins and bodies, but it's not good enough for my girl by far.

Caroline and Elena and I take over the couch while Jeremy digs out the big easel and paper we always use for this game.

"I know it's organic," Caroline teases Elena, eyeing the lemonade she's holding in her lap. "But are you going to drink it or cuddle with it?"

Elena blushes and avoids my eyes.

I sling an arm over her shoulder. "Vampires are known for getting personal with their drinks."

She huffs out an exasperated breath and I duck under her hair to press a kiss to her cheek while she squirms in half-hearted protest.

Caroline groans as she loses rock, paper, scissors to Jeremy. He always picks rock and she always picks scissors. How the fuck they think that's still a fair contest, I'd love to know. Jeremy turns to Stefan for the next round.

I've been banned from that game for months now, because I always win. By the end of the year, I should be banned from about every game Elena has forced me into playing, which suits me just fine.

I take a sip of my drink, not bothering to watch. My brother always goes paper or rock, which means he'll win on the first or second round with Jeremy, depending on which one he picks first. Jeremy curses softly and I hear Stefan catch the marker the teenaged vampire hunter tosses him.

My brother draws a card and Caroline flips the timer before he even has a chance to think it over.

He sends her an irritated look and I prop my boots up on the coffee table as he starts to draw a branching object, like some kind of wild bush-tree. I wait while he draws little balls on the end of each branch. Not a fruit tree, given the placement. Not a famous art installation. He rubs the back of his hand across his forehead like he's scratching it, so nobody else will pick up the cue. Someplace hot then. A weird bush in a hot place.

"Joshua tree."

Stefan winks at me and tosses the marker to a gaping Jeremy.

"What the hell is a Joshua tree?" he wants to know.

"It's like a Christmas tree," I tell him. "Because it comes with an Acura underneath it, with a big red bow and my name on top. Your turn, Ghostbusters."

"No letting Ric peek," Caroline warns.

Jeremy makes a face at her and pulls a card, keeping it close to his chest as he gestures for her to turn over the timer. He quickly draws a square with a triangle on top.

"Box, home, house," Kyle guesses in fast succession and Jeremy shakes his head twice then nods excitedly and moves on to draw a cigar-shaped thing, then a blob with lines coming out of it's face.

"You know, this wouldn't have become a tournament if _any _of you could draw worth a shit," I point out.

Jeremy scribbles out his blob and redraws a smaller blob under the cigar, this time with identifiable whiskers. A seal?

"Garfield?" Kyle guesses. "A fat cat. Wait, no, a walrus?"

I smile. Clubbing baby seals. Elena's going to hate that. Which makes the word-

"Ric got it!" Jeremy crows.

"A walrus?" Elena says skeptically.

"Clubhouse," Jeremy and I say at the same time.

"Wait, how on earth?" she sputters, confused. Jeremy opens his mouth and I give him a quick head-shake.

"Never mind," he tells her, cracking his knuckles with a cocky smile. "It's a guy thing. You wouldn't get it."

I watch Jeremy's face, trying to catch a hint of where Ric's standing. It must drive him fucking crazy hanging out with us when somebody's always trying to sit on him, and only being able to talk through a moody teenager. No wonder he wants to join Jenna in the shiny happy place.

Jeremy passes the marker to Elena. She hands her lemonade to me to hold, giving me a small smile that has my lips curving in return before they have my permission to give me away. She steps over Kyle's outstretched legs, her jeans pulling taut against the round curve of her ass.

Caroline pokes me in the ribs. "Pervert," she mutters.

I give her an unapologetic flare of the eyes. "Beauty Queen, it would be a rejection of the beauty of God's creation to ignore an ass like that."

She rolls her eyes and Elena picks a card and flips the timer. Caroline's eyes snap to the easel as her competitive instinct kicks in. No one who has ever seen Caroline Forbes focus on a prize would have ever doubted that she was destined to become a vicious predator. Whether it is a certificate for community participation or the regional time trials for curling iron useage, she's like a lioness let loose on a dairy farm.

Elena draws a slanted line.

"Hill! Skiing, mountain, heli-skiing!" Caroline guesses, bouncing slightly on the couch cushion.

I'm not on their team, but this is too good to pass up. "The table that Jeremy built in woodshop."

Elena's shoulders shake with silent laughter. Her brother throws me a dark look.

"Roof, stage, playground slide," Caroline barks out.

"Horizon line to a drunk guy," I add.

Elena turns and tries to narrow her eyes at us, but she's laughing too hard for it to have much impact.

"Flagpole after the drunk guy hits it with his Camaro," Kyle teases.

"I don't drive drunk," I protest.

Elena draws a triangle on the front of the line.

"Arrow, javelin, spear, dart!" Caroline blurts.

"I notice you didn't say you don't drink and drive," Kyle points out.

Elena adds fletching to her arrow and then circles the shaft, raising her eyebrows at Caroline, who guesses, "Handle?"

Elena rolls her eyes and starts rubbing the marker up and down the shaft, emphasizing the line of it, staring pointedly at her teammate, who looks baffled.

"You keep working the marker like that and I'm gonna have to guess ejaculation," I drawl.

"Damon!" Elena burst out as the same time as Caroline huffs disgustedly and throws her phone at me. I catch it and toss it to my younger brother, who catches it without altering the disapproving dad face he's pointing at me.

"Time's up," Jeremy points out.

I laugh, because Stefan looks like he's going to sprain his over-developed brow muscle and because we're going to dominate this Pictionary tournament, which means he's going to look really weird driving the car I had all picked out for Elena. It's got a big engine, but the lines are satisfyingly feminine. Idiot would probably drive it with a straight face, oblivious as he is. If he can drive that matchbox Porsche without laughing his lungs inside out every time he opens the garage door, he's capable of anything. I ought to get him one of those Mary Kay pink Cadillacs in his stocking for Christmas.

I hand Elena's lemonade back to her and brush a kiss across her temple as I get up. I eagerly reach for the box of cards, and that's when it hits me.

I'm a vampire.

And I'm playing fucking Pictionary.

Which was humiliating enough the first three times Elena's damn doe eyes suckered me into it. But this time? I'm actually enjoying it.

I mumble something about being back in a minute and beat feet out of the Gilbert's Pottery Barn showpiece of a living room, up their family-picture-lined stairs and into Elena's bathroom, which is the furthest locking door away from the Leave-It-To-Beaver-meets-Twilight spectacle that I just realized I was a part of.

I brace both hands against the sink and try to take a breath, which isn't the easiest thing because I can never make it up those stairs without Elena's eighth grade softball-team picture making a negative image behind my eyelids. She's got braces and a high ponytail and a delighted grin and it always gives me the intense but competing urges to make her a spaghetti dinner and to jerk off in her bathroom.

Which just proves that I'm two steps past the waiting room for the psychiatric ward.

I glare at the sunny picture of pink flowers on the front of Elena's hand soap dispenser. What the fuck is a notorious creature of the night doing in a house like this?

My kills made Al Capone famous and now I'm playing board games and making food I don't even like for a girl who's not even mine because somehow I care if she's happy. I'm one bundt cake from growing ovaries and crying at Nicholas Sparks movies.

It was one thing when it was just Elena.

Wars have been started over women like that. When we first met, I would have pioneered a holy crusade just for a chance to study the curve where her luscious backside smooths into unlimited legs the color of heavy cream with just a hint of dark roasted coffee.

I never had a chance in hell of controlling myself faced with odds like those. And I never gave a shit, either.

But as for the whole rest of our drama-centric cornucopia of supernatural creatures? I prefer to keep my escape hatch open when it comes to them.

For fuck's sake, I once had sex with the whole springtime collection of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models (March through May, in like a lamb and out like a lion and all three of them left me purring like a kitten) and two members of the Rolling Stones, all at the same time. And then last week I caught myself wondering if Jeremy was having safe sex. I don't even know if vampire hunters _need_ to have safe sex and let's face it: I'm never going to be drunk enough to ask Kyle and even if I was, I'd never be able to beat him severely enough that he'd let me live it down.

I might as well take up origami. The new me is going to need a suitably dickless hobby and croquet just takes too long to set up. Fuck it, maybe I'll take over knitting Elena's regurgitated hairball of a scarf. By the time it is long enough to wear, my scrotum will have retreated so far that it'll be like having a budget-friendly sex change.

"Damon?" Elena asks softly from the other side of the door. "Is everything okay?"

"Can't a guy take a piss in peace in this fucking house?" I snap, and then immediately regret it, glaring at myself in the mirror. "Hell. I'm an ass, Elena. Ignore me, I'll be out in a minute."

Instead there's a slight metallic scrape and the knob turns. Elena slips inside and closes the door behind her, her head tilted as she studies me. "Hey."

"You broke the lock just to check on me?" I ask in disbelief. "You're getting as bad as I am."

Elena holds up a straightened paper clip, waggling it with a guilty smile. "Jeremy used to steal my diary and lock himself in here when I had friends over. He'd read it as loud as he could and the faster I could pick the lock, the faster I could shut him up."

I smirk, but it's a weak attempt.

She flips on the faucet to drown out our words and hops up to sit on the counter, her feet swinging cheerfully.

"Decided to have a mid-life crisis after all?" she comments. "Gonna buy a shiny red sports car?"

I scoff. "I'm not going to trade the Camaro for some plastic-engined rice burner."

"Younger woman?" she offers, not even having the grace to look worried.

"You're practically an embryo compared to me," I remind her, having another guilty flash of her eighth grade face. Which was only four fucking years ago. I'm not the one who should be looking for someone younger in this relationship.

That reminds me that now would probably be a great time to stop being a dickhead, so I brush my knuckles down the delicate curve of her cheek.

"I already have the hottest girl and the hottest car," I give her a cocky smile. "And I'm rich as fuck. I'm going to Disneyland, baby."

Elena's face falls. "You do want to move, huh? You said you were happy, and it seemed like you were having fun downstairs, but it's not quite the same as what you're used to, is it?"

Words stick in my throat. The last thing I want to do is make her feel bad, and I don't know how to tell her that I _want_ to want what I used to have.

But I don't.

She touches my arm hesitantly, her forehead adorably crinkled. I'm such a dick, I even like that she worries about me. I wish I could punch myself in the face right now.

"I was serious, Damon. If you're not happy here, we can-," her voice catches but she pushes past it. "We can do something else. We can go somewhere else. I can get a job so I can afford to fly back to check on Jeremy on weekends. Maybe Kyle would move in here after all, if I asked him again."

I kiss her to stop her promises, slipping a hand around the back of her neck under her hair. The feel of her skin under my fingers grounds me, and suddenly it's not that hard to remember why I'm in a bathroom with pink-flowered soap. Because I've felt more joy in the last week than in the last decade.

She pulls back just a little, resting her forehead against mine. "Damon?"

I know what she's asking.

"I fucking hate origami," I warn her.

"Um, okay?" she says, probably already mentally stocking the basement cell with fresh sheets and a cooler of blood for my next stint down there.

I know this girl. She's sweet and insanely forgiving, and the stubbornest fucking creature on the planet that doesn't have hooves. I could be in for weeks of big, brown-eyed looks and well-intentioned, poorly executed cheer-me-up cooking if I don't tell her what's wrong. I don't know who told her that cookies were the correct pacifier for a displeased predator, but I should remove their digestive system. Poetic justice for all the tile-hard cookies I've had to ingest in the last year.

"Has Caroline been bugging you to help with stuff for the wedding again?" She sighs. "I'll do whatever origami she needs, Damon, and I swear I won't let her guilt-trip you about it. You shouldn't let her get to you. You know she's half out of her mind over this wedding."

"That's only because my brother is too stupid to know that she'd be happier if he would have given her a budget," I snap, stalking across the room to crank on the shower to double our noise buffer. "I made potato salad," I complain to Elena.

She gives me a look that indicates her list of supplies for the basement cell just got a few items longer.

"I'm good," I say pointedly. "At Pictionary."

Her brow crinkles further. "Damon, you're good at everything."

"I knew Donovan's work schedule," I practically spit at her.

"So? It hasn't changed in ages, and you're at the Grill all the time."

I look at the ceiling. Stefan tried to warn me about this months ago. Apparently having a girlfriend means you have to talk about your feelings.

I'm not quite sure why the world works like this. To me, it makes about as much sense as using a duck to start your car. And yet here I am the proverbial feathery neck in my fist, beak halfway to the ignition.

Maybe JC Penney's sells croquet sets. I can pick one up while I'm buying myself a fucking sundress and a matching set of Mary Janes.

"Elena," I tell her patiently. "Do you know what I got in the mail the other day?"

She looks like she needs an aspirin. "The new boots you wanted?"

"No. I got an envelope that said: 'Damon Salvatore, you may have already won $5000 and a Blu-Ray player!' Accompanying a set of address labels with kittens on them and a suggestion that I donate to the Humane Society." I blink at her, waiting for her to connect the dots.

"You're upset about junk mail?" she asks incredulously. "Live people get junk mail, dead people get junk mail, undead people get junk mail. That doesn't mean you have to move to a drafty mansion in Transylvania. You'd probably get junk mail there, too."

I glare at the fuzzy bathroom rug. "At least in Transylvania I could eat the mailman."

Elena laughs softly and I turn my scowl on her instead. "You know, I think I'm gonna bag this dog and pony show and head for the Grill. Catch you later."

I reach for the doorknob but she catches my hand.

"I think I know what this is about," she says, fighting a smile. "You think you're losing your edge because we haven't had to kill anyone in a few weeks."

"Thank you, Dr. Gilbert," I tell her sardonically. "Did you consider that I might actually have a pathological hatred for board games and family barbeques but was going along with them in a fairly transparent attempt to get laid?"

"Yeah, because you have to work so hard for that," she scoffs. "Listen, Damon, if a werewolf came through that bathroom door right now you'd have their internal organs sorted out on the floor in order of size before I even realized what was happening. The only thing that's changed is that now you'd do that for anybody in this house, not just me." She squeezes my hand, dropping her voice. "That doesn't mean you're going soft. It means you have a family now. A family that loves you every bit as much as you love them."

"Elena, I love _you_," I remind her. "I want you to have your friends and family around because they make you happy. But if you start listening for me to chime in on the chorus of Kumbaya, you might be disappointed."

Just because I want to kill her friends less frequently than I used to doesn't mean that I'm going to buy us all matching BFF necklaces. It sure as shit doesn't mean I love them. Though it doesn't explain the temporary insanity of the disgusting potato salad. I rub the tattoo on my forearm, my left eye starting to twitch. *

"I know you," she reminds me softly. "You're always going to be the kind of guy who would cut off his right foot for Caroline but would never tell her she looked good in her new dress when she didn't, even if it was what she really wanted to hear. You're the same, Damon. And you've completely changed, all at the same time." She kisses me softly on my unresisting lips and then hops off the counter.

"If you need to break something, try to make it a window. Those are covered under the homeowner's insurance."

She slips out before I can respond, which is probably a good thing. I crank off the water in the sink and the tub. I need some blood in its original packaging, and I need to get the hell out of suburbia. I open the door to Elena's room so I can drop out her window and skip Vampire Barbie's rant when she realizes I'm bailing on her precious tournament. Honestly, it's like the girl doesn't know she's going to lose.

I hear them as soon as I turn off the water.

"Is everything okay?" Jeremy asks in a low voice.

I've really got to teach that boy how to sound casual, because when he tries to force it, his voice skitters all sideways like he's talking to the first girl in school to sprout breasts.

"Is he pissed because he was having fun or because he was being less jerkish than usual?" asks Caroline impatiently. "Seriously, Stefan, I don't know how somebody like you managed to have such an emotional retard for a brother."

"If you wouldn't have made such a big deal about the potato salad, he'd have been fine," Elena hisses.

"What, so now I'm in trouble for being _nice_?" Caroline snaps, her voice climbing. "You threatened to hit me with a lawn chair for being mean to him earlier! Which incidentally, is probably what it is going to take to get him to admit he's happy."

"You want to pick a fight or you want me to do it?" Kyle asks, loudly crunching a potato chip.

"I'll do it," Stefan volunteers.

Fuck.

If there's anything more humiliating than being predictable, it's being wrong.

I glower at Elena's window, and then turn toward the stairs.

It's almost worth it to see Elena's eyebrows hit her hairline when I saunter in and reach for the box of Pictionary cards. The rest of our family looks on warily as I cock my head at my brother.

"Is it still our turn?"

The corner of his mouth twitches up and he nods without comment.

"Well, it's about time." Caroline sniffs primly and crosses her legs as if she expected this all along. "I'd hate to ruin a good lawn chair on the likes of you."

* * *

_*This is a reference to a tattoo Damon has in Desperate Love, which is my character-adjusted variation on Ian S.'s small forearm tattoo. Damon's is an Italian phrase that roughly translates to "Don't bullshit yourself."_

_**In Desperate Love mythology, vampire hunters can give an oath that they're held to by the spirits. It's like compelling yourself to do something. _


	17. Happily Ever After

_Author's Note: Desperate Love took off from canon after 4x06, so Carol Lockwood was never killed in this universe._

* * *

**Chapter 17: Happily Ever After**

**ELENA POV**

The ring of a knife against crystal announces the toast and I roll my eyes and offer a silent prayer of thanks that it's about to be over.

I don't know how Caroline's managed to find time to enjoy her wedding in between all the times she's threatened, begged and scolded me to make sure Damon doesn't say something awful during his toast. She actually had the nerve to tell me to withhold sex, though why she thinks I would want to punish myself, I have no idea.

I did talk him into swapping out the cubic zirconia prank ring for her real diamond before the wedding, but of course she isn't grateful because I can't tell her that she's been flashing around a brilliant-cut billboard for the Home Shopping Network for the past few months.

Damon brushes a kiss onto my temple before he gets up from our table to head for the front of the room and I smile at him without saying a word. Caroline's crazy. Damon will be Damon, and there's no point in me wasting my breath arguing with him. If anything, it would just push him to be more contrary and say something really terrible. And I know, even if Caroline's too stressed to remember, that it is usually when you expect the worst of Damon that he surprises you.

I take an early sip of my champagne though, just in case, because Damon will be Damon. It could go either way.

He waits for the crowd to settle, looking unrealistically handsome in a tuxedo that appears to be tailored specifically to make my mouth go dry. When he raises his glass, Caroline kicks me under the table. I toy with the stem of my champagne flute and smile soothingly at her. Maybe I should kick off my shoes in case I need to run. Will she go for me first, or Damon?

"I never expected there could be a woman superhuman enough to make my mopey little brother fun again." Damon begins, a gleam in his eye. "So no one was more surprised than I was when he found one. It took me a while before I didn't mistake the sound of his laugh for a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner," he waits for the laughter to die down. "But you know, I've kind of gotten used to it. So even though she's a little bit of a control freak," Caroline gasps and Stefan puts a hand on her shoulder, shooting Damon a warning glance.

"And even though she filled my classic convertible with Count Chocula cereal and turned my best booze into a Waterford Jell-O mold," he has to pause again for the crowd to quiet.

"And dyed me _blue_…"

I grin. Damon's a natural. The guests are roaring with laughter, and Caroline looks like she can't decide if she wants to hug him or stab him with her salad fork.

"I am forced to admit," Damon says, cocking his head to the side. "I'm glad she's part of the family."

Caroline gasps again, her hands flying to her mouth, but this time there are tears in her eyes. Stefan's smiling his quiet smile, and I realize for the first time that he and Damon get the same lines at the edges of their eyes when they're pleased about something. They're faint, because they'll never age, but they're still there.

And its then that I realize that all three of them are Salvatores now. Everyone but me.

Under the cover of the tablecloth, I touch my bare ring finger and look back up at my boyfriend, wondering how I should tell him that I'm ready for that ring to stop living in the safe in the study. He catches my eye and smiles, and something about it makes me think that maybe I won't have to say anything at all.

"Any girl who can make my brother this happy is worth her weight in gold," Damon says, and Carol Lockwood sighs audibly. I slant her a suspicious glance, remembering how much she paid for Damon in one of the bachelor auctions. "And that's going to cost me a hell of a lot more gold than I budgeted for if she keeps hitting the hors d'oeuvres the way she has been," he says sardonically.

The microphone squeals as Caroline tackles him into a hug, totally ignoring his last cheap shot.

"Honey, you can't move like that in a strapless," he warns her to general laughter as the microphone catches his comment and projects it for the whole party. "Not if you don't want to make Stefan a lot happier man than he already is."

He flicks off his microphone with his thumb and gives her a quick side-hug even as I hear him sing-song, "Somebody's ruining all her fancy make-up... Quit it or you're going to look like a Goth in the cake pictures."

Liz Forbes hurries forward, her eyes shining just as brightly as her daughter's, and hugs him from the other side before he can move away.

He pats her shoulder awkwardly, wincing when he realizes it is left bare by her summer dress. He widens his eyes at me over their shoulders.

I cross my arms and smile at him, shaking my head deliberately. He's probably going to be absolutely wretched to Caroline to even things out after that speech, but for now, I'm going to let him dangle while he pretends not to enjoy the fruits of being nice in public for the first time this century.

He glares at me for a second, but then his gaze catches his brother's. Stefan doesn't get up to hug him, but he doesn't have to. Their eyes are dry, but suddenly mine aren't.

I know Stefan feels guilty for forcing his brother to transition, but I don't see how they could have lived without each other. I look away and swallow because their moment feels too private to intrude upon.

There's plenty else to look at, thanks to Caroline's fastidious planning. They got their June wedding, and it is fabulous. After endless debate, Damon's eighth death threat, and his second actual murder attempt, she managed to settle on blue and yellow for her wedding colors. She said they were hopeful, and there was nothing that a pair of immortals needed more than love and hope.

In the center of each table are twin ponds linked by miniature wooden bridges. On the ponds float tiny glass boats filled with blue and yellow candies. Each of the place cards was hand-done by a calligrapher in Japan, with a line drawing of a unicorn in the corner. I've overheard Caroline telling the sanitized version of the unicorn story at least a dozen times today.

The cake is a ten-layer fondant masterpiece draped with roses in full bloom, just like the one in Stefan's tattoo. It took Caroline a solid four-minute block of words to explain all the flavors and fillings to me and I did, without shame, bribe Damon with sexual favors to ensure that it wouldn't explode later today.

Her dress is a tour de force, as it well should be. I heard her wedding dress rant so many times that I can still hear it echo in my ears when I try to go to sleep at night.

_When you ask people what they want for a wedding dress, _everybody_ says simple. Even if they're thirty yards of chiffon into the flounces and they've run out of room to glue on their tacky little crystals. I say, screw that! I don't want something simple. I want a dress that'll make every girl on the east coast cry her waterproof mascara off in envy, and I'm _not _going to apologize for it. _

The one she finally chose has an asymmetrical pair of satin sashes crisscrossing her bodice that create an unmistakably modern sense of momentum that highlights the romantic, lacy corset top and filmy ball gown skirt beneath.

She's smoothing it back into place now, while Damon continues to look pained, nodding at whatever Liz is saying to him and smiling tightly when she leans up to kiss his cheek.

Caroline didn't, bless her, even stoop to the old stereotype of dressing her bridesmaids in ugly satin dresses. Judging by Damon's reaction, my bridesmaid dress is a complete success.

A small smile curves my lips and in my mind, I'm right back at this morning's ceremony, when Damon first saw my dress.

Damon was the only groomsman, and since Bonnie and I were both bridesmaids, Caroline cut any numerical awkwardness by having him placed at the alter with Stefan instead of doing the procession with us. So Damon is already waiting at the end of the aisle when I step onto the white carpet runner.

My long, blue maid-of-honor dress looks a lot like the dress I wore to the first Miss Mystic Falls pageant. When I round the corner Damon's eyes meet mine with a touch of awe, and I know he remembers. I can feel the bittersweet memory of those guilty, tension-filled days pass between us. Then his lips quirk up on one side, he winks and a wide smile spreads across my face, because Katherine is just plain wrong.

Being caught is worlds better than being chased.

I glance down, blushing. When I look up again, I see Stefan there and my step falters.

With both Salvatores waiting in front of the beribboned altar with their eyes intent on me, the memories are nearly overwhelming and I have to concentrate just to keep walking. My body feels pummeled by the echo of the fear and heartbreak of my last days as a human, struggling so hard to choose when every choice felt dead wrong in my heart.

My gaze flicks from blue eyes to green and back again and at the same instant, they both offer me a reassuring smile.

But suddenly, I don't need it. I'm radiant with a smile that only grows as I turn the corner and take my place next to the altar, the music changing to announce the entrance of the real star of this show. This may not be my wedding day, but I'm the luckiest girl alive and I absolutely know it.

I did it.

I found a way to keep them both. To make sure they are both loved, as much as they've always deserved to be.

Take that, Katherine.

* * *

_**The End**_

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_Author's Note: I hope those little stories brought a little bit of joy into your day. That's what they were meant to do. Thank you, to each and every one of you who have followed, favorited, reviewed and otherwise made me feel like a real writer and have brought so many smiles into my days. I wish you knew how happy you all made me!_

_For the first time (gasps of horror!) I have no other fanfiction written yet. But please feel free to hit the "Author Follow" button if you'd like to be alerted when I do write a new story because judging by my record, it probably won't be long ;) _

_Thank you all for the overwhelming response to this story, and for making me glad that I write. _

_Caroline's wedding dress:_

_Theknot dot com/wedding-dress/monique-lhuillier/Cecelia_

_Or just google "Monique Lhuillier Cecelia" and ignore the fact that the model looks like a crackhead_


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